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Key Bible Verses:The Word became human and made his home among us. (John 1:14) Dig Deeper: John 1:10-14

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1).

The baby Mary held was connected to the dawn of time. He saw the first ray of sunlight and heard the first crash of a wave. The baby was born, but the Word never was.

"All things were made through him" (1 Cor. 8:6, NCV). Not by him, but through him. Jesus didn't fashion the world out of raw material he found. He created all things out of nothing.

And then, what no theologian conceived, what no rabbi dared to dream, God did. "The Word became flesh" (John 1:14, NIV). The Artist became oil on his own palette. The Potter melted into the mud on his own wheel. God became an embryo in the belly of a village girl. Christ in Mary. God in Christ.

The Word of God entered the world with the cry of a baby. His family had no cash or connections or strings to pull. Jesus, the Maker of the universe, the one who invented time and created breath, was born into a family too humble to swing a bed for a pregnant mom-to-be.

—Max Lucado in God's Story, Your Story

My Response: Why is it significant that God entered the world as a tiny baby and was born to parents who seemed so ordinary?

Thought to Apply: He was made man, who made man. He was created of a mother who he created. He was carried by hands that he formed. He cried in a manger in wordless infancy, he is the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute.—St. Augustine (church leader, theologian)

Adapted from God's Story, Your Story (Zondervan, 2011) by permission. All rights reserved by the copyright holder and/or the publisher. May not be reproduced.

Copyright © 2012 by Christianity Today/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Heavenly Father, may I take time to reflect on the down-to-earth realities of the miracle of Christmas; show me how the wonderfully ordinary story of Joseph and Mary intersects with my own.

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