ONCE SAW A painting by Julius Gari Melchers entitled simply The Nativity. The longer I gazed at it, the more it seemed to tremble with the mystery of that “starry, starry night” long ago.

Perhaps it was the way the artist captured the brooding face of the husband-not-father as he leans forward on his squatted knees and pensively stares at the bedded newborn tucked at his feet in that crude box of hay. Or maybe it was the utter “spentness” of the young birth mother, exhausted, now prone on the cold floor, save for her slumping shoulders propped against the stable wall, her tired eyes at half mast, her weary face expressionless and resting upon the side of her betrothed.

It makes you wonder: What is it the husband broods upon? What thoughts are his? And hers, the young mother? In the heavy, still air, do they wonder that the “infant lowly” is the “infant holy”?

“I wonder as I wander . . .” That old Appalachian folk carol still plays upon the wind, doesn’t it? For who can help wondering?

G. K. Chesterton once penned his own poetic brooding over the Nativity in these lines from “The Wise Men”:

The world grows terrible and white,
And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
And something much too plain to say.
The Child that was ere world begun
(. . . We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone . . .)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.

What was that startling announcement the angel Gabriel had pronounced to young Mary? “That holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”¹ How could she have understood it? And if she couldn’t, how can we? Do you? Chesterton was right: “We walk bewildered in the light, for something is too large for sight, and something much too plain to say.”

Which must be why the ancient Word simply reads: “Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.”² Two words as provocative in Greek as they are in English—mega musterion—a truly “mega mystery.” For how else shall we describe the utter incarnation (literally, “infleshment”) of the Infinite into this shadowland we finites still call home?

Two words: mega mystery.

But if our feeble minds insist on reducing that complexity to a single word, then there is only one left. And it is a name, His name: Emmanuel, “which being interpreted is, God with us.”³

The seed of God planted in the womb of humanity—why the very mechanics and genetics of such a divine-human anatomical transfer are more than even our third-millennium science can fathom! Although I suppose our excursion into genetic cloning with Dolly the sheep may crack the door of this “mega mystery” perhaps by only a slit. But even then all we’ve yet to show is that we can take the genetic base of one creature and from it create another creature just like the first. Which, of course, will never create God out of us (much to our sinful consternation).

he great defender of Christianity in the twentieth century, C. S. Lewis, describes an imaginary conversation with a skeptic friend of his over the miraculous virgin birth of Christ:

“‘Miracles,’ said my friend. ‘Oh, come. Science has knocked the bottom out of all that. We know that Nature is governed by fixed laws.’

“‘Didn’t people always know that?’ said I.

“‘[Why], no,’ said he. ‘For instance, take a story like the Virgin Birth. We know now that such a thing couldn’t happen. We know there must be a male spermatozoon. . . . Modern science has shown there’s no such thing [as a virgin birth].’

“‘Really,’ said I. ‘Which of the sciences?’

“‘Oh, well, that’s a matter of detail,’ said my friend. ‘I can’t give you chapter and verse from memory.’

“‘But, don’t you see,’ said I, ‘that science never could show anything of the sort?’

“‘Why on earth not?’

“‘Because science studies Nature. And the question is whether anything besides Nature exists—anything “outside.” How could you find that out by studying simply Nature?’”⁴

Lewis’s point is simple but true, isn’t it? Science is unable to explain what it cannot examine. But does that inadequacy consequently limit the universe of reality to only what science can examine? No.

Lewis then asks his imaginary friend if the laws of arithmetic can prove that putting a quarter in a drawer today and another quarter in that drawer tomorrow will guarantee that in two days you’ll find fifty cents in there. Yes, his friend retorts, unless of course someone walks off with one of the quarters.

“‘Ah, but that’s the whole point,’” Lewis replies. “‘The laws of arithmetic can tell you what you’ll find, with absolute certainty, provided that there’s no interference. . . . Now, aren’t the laws of Nature much in the same boat? Don’t they all tell you what will happen provided there’s no interference?

. . . If there was anything outside Nature, and if it interfered—then the events which the scientist expected wouldn’t follow. That would be what we call a miracle.’”⁵

Or what the Scriptures call a mega mystery. “Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.” Stepping from outside nature into the very body and mind and soul of humanity. The miracle and mystery of Emmanuel.

ut in the end the great mystery that the season of Christmas compels us to ponder isn’t so much that God could do it, but is rather that God would do it, is it not? Isn’t that the truly mega mystery of all? Why would He do it for the likes of you and me? A hundred years ago these words wrestled with that mystery:

“The work of redemption is called a mystery, and it is indeed the mystery by which everlasting righteousness is brought to all who believe. The race in consequence of sin was at enmity with God. Christ, at an infinite cost, by a painful process, mysterious to angels as well as to men, assumed humanity. Hiding His divinity, laying aside His glory, He was born a babe in Bethlehem.”⁶

That is a provocative line: “Christ, at an infinite cost, by a painful process, mysterious to angels as well as to men, assumed humanity.” By a painful process? How easily we crassly reduce the price of the Incarnation to His having to give up celestial breakfasts in bed and 24-hour angelic maid service. Can we ever know the depths of His “painful” descent from heaven’s resplendent glory to our drab gloom?

Philip Yancey wonders the same: “It took courage, I believe, for God to lay aside power and glory and to take a place among human beings who would greet him with . . . haughtiness and skepticism. . . . It took courage to risk descent to a planet known for its clumsy violence, among a race known for rejecting its prophets. What more foolhardly thing could God have done?”⁷

As G. K. Chesteron confessed: “Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator.”⁸ Who can possibly comprehend this courageous divine coming unto us?

“Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.”

Again, in the end could it be that the mystery is not so much how could He, but rather why would He?

rennan Manning tells the heartwarming story about little 7-year-old Richard Ballenger in Anderson, South Carolina. It’s the day before Christmas. Richie’s mother is busily wrapping some packages and asks her young son if he’d please shine her shoes. Soon, with the proud smile that only a 7-year-old can muster, he presents the shiny shoes for inspection. His mother is so pleased she hands him a quarter.

On Christmas morning as she put on the shoes to go to church, she felt a strange lump in one shoe. Taking it off, she shook the shoe and out dropped a quarter wrapped in a small piece of paper. And on the paper in a child’s scrawl were the words: “I done it for love.”⁹

That’s it, is it not? There in the dark, dank shadows of that odoriferous backyard stable we unwrap the very first Christmas gift of all, and there on the wrinkled wrapping paper the handwriting of God: “I done it for love.” Oh sure, His grammar would be better—but how could you say it any clearer? “I done it for love.”

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”¹⁰

The mystery of divine love. Birthed in a box of cow feed. Executed on a cross of wood. Ascended on a cloud of glory. Returning in a sky of fire. The great mystery of “God with us” forever and ever. Amen.

“I wonder as I wander.”      And no wonder.

Amen.

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 ¹ Luke 1:35.
 ² 1 Tim. 3:16.
 ³ Matt. 1:23.
 ⁴ God in the Dock, pp. 72, 73.
 ⁵ Ibid., pp. 73, 74.
 ⁶ The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, Ellen G. White Comments, vol. 7, p. 915.
 ⁷ The Jesus I Never Knew, p. 42. (Italics supplied.)
 ⁸ Orthodoxy, p. 137, quoted in Yancey, p. 42.
 ⁹ Lion and Lamb (Fleming H. Revell Co., 1986), p. 186.
¹⁰ John 3:16.

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Dwight K. Nelson is senior pastor of Pioneer Memorial church on the campus of Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan.