"... The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel." (v. 14)

For Reading and Meditation:     Isaiah 7:13-17

Some religions, such as Hinduism, claim that their gods incarnate themselves, but those so-called incarnations are rooted in fantasy, not in fact. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ is not just a great idea - it really happened. There were eyewitnesses and a written record. The genius of Christianity is that it is not just a religion of influences, values and principles. It is a religion of happenings, of events, of plain but wonderful historical occurrences. The Incarnation belongs to the very marrow of the gospel; therefore, we can assert that God in the Person of His Son came to earth at a certain hour in history, lived and died among us, and afterwards rose from the dead. Those who say, "I admire the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, I applaud the work and teachings of Christ and follow His principles in my daily life, but I cannot believe the historical part of it, that God took a body and became man," cannot really claim to be Christians. If they do not believe Christ's statements concerning Himself and the reason why He came into this world, then though they may be many splendid things they are not disciples of Christ. To be a Christian means first and foremost accepting the great fact of the Incarnation - that Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, was born at Bethlehem in the way the Scriptures describe. Of this be certain - the Christian faith carries certain facts at its heart, and the greatest of them is this: "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us."

O Father, I pray that nothing will ever diminish the wondrous truth of Your Incarnation in my soul. For without that You would be a distant deity, vague and unapproachable. In Jesus You have come close to me. And how! I shall be eternally grateful. Amen