Second Sunday of Advent: He came as a baby

(This is the second in a four-part series that seeks to help Christians observe Advent, that season celebrating the coming of our Savior and leading to Christmas Day. This series is designed for use on each Sunday of Advent, but it can be used at any point.)

It is a story that could only be described as myth or fable except that it is recorded in the perfect Word that has the perfect God as its author: The Creator of the cosmos becomes a man. Even more stunning, He does not take on flesh as a full-grown human being. He becomes human the way all humans do -- by conception -- with one all-important difference: He has no earthly father.

The God who has made and regulates all things becomes an embryo. Early -- really early -- in His gestation, another unborn child and his mother recognize He is the long-awaited Messiah (Luke 1:39-45). In a virgin's womb, He matures as other unborn children do. His body takes shape and grows until the nine months of pregnancy come to their end, and His humble mother delivers Him in a humble location. He arrives in the outside world through the labor and pain of a young mortal.

As J.I. Packer wrote in his book Knowing God:

[T]he Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. And there was no illusion or deception in this: the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the incarnation.

Yet, this same person who humbled Himself to become an embryo and to die a criminal's death as a man is the One whose exaltation to the highest place is assured. Phil. 2:9-11 describes God the Father's elevation of His Son this way:

For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

This is the story of Christmas -- a baby born in a Middle Eastern town is Lord of all.

Here is "Gather 'Round, Ye Children Come," a song by Andrew Peterson that fits with the theme of this post: