The story brims with contrasts and disparities, and yet we tell it year by year.
We meet an emperor, and then, at last, a baby. We hear of wealth, taxation, and deep poverty. We marvel at the gap between an iron power and abject, fragile weakness.
The One who roamed the far-flung galaxies created by His word lies helpless in a trough from which farm animals are fed.
Brilliant, iridescent angels terrify poor shepherds, who abandon pregnant ewes to gather ‘round the only Lamb who could deliver them.
Unlearned and voiceless laborers at the bottom of the ladder are tasked with sharing the first good news the world had heard in centuries.
And for all this, the story is ever new and never finished. We know this story—we tell this story—because it is, somehow, the tale of our lives. We know the clash of expectations and realities; of hopes held high and lives lived low; of failures, weakness, joy and pain.
And so this birth is like every other birth, and like none that ever has occurred. “What has come into being in Him was life, and the life was the light of all people” (Jn 1:4).
Grace came to live with us—to change the ending of our stories. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (Jn 1:5).
So stay in grace.
—Bill Knott