The Coming – Sunday, December 19, 1982
Jesus, who created the world, could certainly have chosen any birthplace here. He must have come to a stable by design. Were there no palaces in Israel? Were there no halls decked with finery and smelling of perfume? Were there no comforts in the country, no soft beds or medical attendants? Almost surely there were, but that was not to be His beginning.
Surely, He could have come to us in a fiery proclamation, making us tremble at His presence, all flesh kneeling at His arrival. But instead, He came in the night, a small baby who cried with hunger and looked for warmth in His mother’s arms.
We may even wonder that He came to us at all, Immanuel, God with us, instead of a divine and distant being, too high to assume our problems and our pain.
He came, however, not to impress us in the ways we are used to impressing each other. Not by opulence or power or distance. He came to look like us and feel with us, bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrow, so that when we kneel at the very limits of our endurance, He knows because He has been there before us.
He came to the sick, the great healer whose own body was wounded in the world.
He came to the poor, a wanderer who had no home.
He came to the forsaken, a man betrayed by a kiss by his friend.
He came to the discouraged, a teacher whose followers deserted Him at His most critical moment.
And He came to all of us with a personal concern and an identity with moral man. He said, “For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger and ye took me in.”1
His followers asked, “When did we do this?” and He answered that it was when they did it to “the least of these my brethren.”2
There is a Christmas lullaby that pleads, “Be with me Lord Jesus…and love me I pray.”3 It is a plea that is answered even before uttered for we adore Him only because He first adored us.
And He came quietly to a stable on a silent night to show us just how much.
1 New Testament, Matthew 25:35
2 New Testament, Matthew 25:40
3 Luther, Martin, “Away In A Manger”, Sing With Me—Songs For Children, Deseret Book Co. for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1970
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December 19, 1982
Broadcast Number 2,783