For to us a child is born, to us a son is given…  (Isaiah 9:6)

I don’t know if there is anything more exciting than the birth of a baby.   The feeling of joy, of life, that you get from holding a newborn—it’s astounding.  It doesn’t even have to be your child.  It can be a nephew, or a cousin, or the child of a friend.  Hey, it could be a random kid from the maternity ward that you grabbed just for the experience.

Not that you would ever do that because that would be wrong and earn you psychiatric evaluations and the serious threat of incarceration.

My point is this: Hope arrives with every baby.

How wonderful is it that God chose to bring Christ to us in this way?  Think about it—the Christ could have appeared fully grown, striding out of the desert on a Thursday morning.  He could have simply walked into the temple and started preaching.  Instead, we get to see him as a baby—yes, so that his genealogy could be verified and so that prophecy would be fulfilled—but also so that we could see a God willing to humble himself by birth, as he would one day humble himself by death.

Your God loves you so much that he sent a baby—the epitome of life—to call you to eternal life.

Heed the call, Beloved.

Happy Monday