Let me say something about that word: miracle. For too long, it’s been used to characterize things or events that, though pleasant, are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, a spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week – a miracle, people say, as if they’ve been educated from greeting cards. I’m sorry, but nope. Such things are worth our notice every day of the week, but to call them miracles evaporates the strength of the word. Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. … A miracle contradicts the will of the earth.

What’s so amazing about the birth of a child is NOT that it is a miracle, but just the opposite. The ability that God gives human beings to mirror him by bringing forth life is so remarkable because it is a part of everyday life! We ought to marvel at childbirth because this remarkable occurrence happens thousands of times everyday. God made the “un-miracle” of birth a part of his created order, not a miraculous event

Except when it is. In all of history, there was one childbirth that was nothing short of miraculous. In an animal shed, on the outskirts of a one-stoplight town, the fullness of God himself entered into the darkness of a sinful world. God, dwelling with us! Jesus, “who did not consider equality from God something to be held on to, but made himself nothing, taking on the very form of a servant, and being made in human likeness… he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:6-8). This Christmas, we celebrate the one true miracle of birth! May you have a wonderful season of preparation and joy, worshipping our God who lived among us, that we might live forever with him.