Words on a page. That's what they knew. It's how they knew Him.
Words inscribed on stone. Words copied onto a scroll.
They knew Him through the law. They knew Him through their books of history that recorded mighty acts of supernatural power. They knew Him through books of poetry, books of wisdom. They knew Him through the potent pronouncements of prophets, through visions that had been fulfilled and others yet to be.
That was good. But He knew, He always knew, it wasn't good enough. For them to not just know about Him, but to truly know Him, something else would be needed.
Yet for 400 years of silence, they wondered if they would ever hear from Him again. But He knew, He always knew, the fullness of time was coming when He would shatter the darkness in the most remarkable, the most astonishing, the most unpredictable way.
No longer would mankind be writing our own desperate, despondent story.
There in a Bethlehem manger, while kings and rulers, princes and sovereigns slept, the King of creation was making the unlikeliest of entrances in front of the unlikeliest of witnesses.
Angelic choirs were dispatched from the halls of heaven to carry the glorious news to a group of dirty, disrespected, hillside shepherds that the Great I Am could be found lying in an animal trough, wrapped in cloths, tended to by a peasant girl and her betrothed.
There He was. Writing Himself into our story.
Into our pain, He wrote peace.
Into our sorrow, He wrote hope.
Into our confusion, He wrote grace.
Into our sin, He wrote salvation.
There in that Bethlehem manger, the hopes and fears of all the years were met in Him that night.
They seem so different, those people 2,000 years ago. But they're not.
- They were living in a land of confusion, and so are we.
- They were living in a land without peace, and so are we.
- They were living in a world ruled by wealth and empire, and so are we.
Methods and machinery may have changed, but mankind remains the same. Two thousand years of separation hasn't stopped modern man from still pining away in sin and error, desperately searching for answers in places where they will never be found.
So thank God for Christmas - a yearly opportunity to remember that what the prophet Isaiah foretold, what the Bethlehem manger fulfilled, it still bids men fall to their knees in humble gratitude:
The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.
