Many people thought that to run a 2 hour marathon (42.2km in 2 hours) was impossible. That was until Eliud Kipchoge in 2019 broke it. He ran the distance in 1 hour 59 minutes 40 seconds. An amazing feat. Sometimes the impossible happens. Was this a miracle? No. We know that it’s a case of hard, disciplined work, of creating the right conditions, like providing pacers, the right nutrients, running in the right weather conditions, etc. It was an extraordinary event, but not a miracle. But what if something humanly impossible did occur? Something humans couldn’t replicate no matter how hard we tried. If the supernatural, or the divine, intervened in our world and did what we could not do, that would be a miracle.
A Christmas Miracle
That is what happened 2000 years ago at Christmas. The impossible happened. A baby was born to a virgin. Maybe you’re a bit sceptical when you hear this, and you ask the question: How could this happen? It’s a reasonable question. You might be surprised to find that when Mary found out she was going to be a virgin giving birth, her first question was: ‘How?’. The answer given to Mary is as surprising then as it is now, the angel said, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). God is going to intervene in history and do something humans can’t do. He is sending his Son to be born as a human. He is bypassing the normal way babies are conceived to show that Jesus is not an ordinary baby. He is the supernatural, divine, Son of God.
Impossible?
To us, if we use our reason and our logic, it is impossible that God would enter our world in the person of His Son. But as Mary is told, and we need to hear, “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). And why did God do this impossible thing? It wasn’t just so we could have a holiday once a year, though that’s nice. No, it was so that his Son could come, show us what God is like, die on the cross in our place, and do another impossible thing – come back to life after three days.
The Christmas miracle is that God did the impossible. He intervened in our world to bring us into relationship with him. If we trust in His Son we can have peace with God, we have been promised eternal life.
Maybe this Christmas you can get more acquainted with the Christmas miracle that is Jesus born of a virgin. And you can rejoice, as you ponder how good it is that God did the impossible.
Have a blessed Christmas.
Rev. Daniel Faricy
