“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us….” John 1:14
No one has ever chosen to be born. No one ever got to pick their nationality, the family they’d have, or what town they’d grow up in. We all arrive into this world cast upon the care of our parents without any say in the manner of life we’ll inherit upon our first naked and desperate breaths outside the womb. We don’t get to chose any of it. This is true for all of us, except for one.
Every man has been born, but there is only one man who was given a choice. This man, called the Word, was in the beginning with God, He was God. All things were created through Him and without Him nothing was made that was made. This is the one that chose to born, this is Word that became. To try and grasp this mystery hurts our minds but thrills our hearts: He took on flesh, God became a man. There has never been one born like this one, He is fully human and completely God all at the same time. He was in the beginning with God and yet He has a birthday. He created all things and yet He has a mother.
It is worth considering what kind of life the only man who had a say in his birth actually chose to live. What kind of life would you chose if you were given an option? My guess is you wouldn’t have chosen the one Jesus did. He lived in a small town that people said nothing good comes from (John 1:46), He was born into a poor family, He worked with his hands, and He lived in a country under foreign occupation. Even the circumstances of his birth were mean; He spent His first hours lying in a feeding troth for the beasts because there was no room for his family at the inn.
What is even more astonishing than how Jesus chose to come into the world, is the fact that He chose to remain there hidden in the mundane of everyday life for 30 years before His true identity as the Son of God was revealed. Between His meager birth in the Bethlehem manger and the humble proclamation of his cousin John: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” lie 30 years cloaked in silent mystery, the details of his childhood largely absent from the holy scriptures. But oh how these silent years speak volumes to us about who He is! God became flesh and dwelt among us, perfectly content to live hidden among us as just another guy from Nazareth. Humble, Human, Holy.
