I observed the futile amazement with which every skeptic from Celsus to Wells stood around the cradle of the Christ. I wondered why this helpless Babe was thrust into the world at a time when Roman greed, Jewish hate, and Greek subtlety would combine to crush Him. And yet this most powerful, devastating combination ever known in history served only to advance the cause of the Infant who was born in a stable — the purest human being born in the filthiest place in the world.
I marvelled that this poverty-stricken and uneducated plebian, who exercised no authority, commanded no army, held no office, received no honours, wrote no books, and who died in early manhood the most contemptible of deaths, a malefactor on a cross between two criminals — I marvelled that His name is yet the most esteemed name on earth, even among the skeptics themselves.
No unbeliever could tell me why His words are as charged with power today as they were nineteen hundred years ago. Nor could scoffers explain how those pierced hands pulled human monsters with gnarled souls out of a hell of iniquity and overnight transformed them into steadfast, glorious heroes who died in torturing flames, that others might know the love and mighty power of the Christ who had given peace to their souls.
No agnostic could make clear why seemingly immortal empires pass into oblivion, while the glory and power of the murdered Galilean are gathering beauty and momentum with every attack and every age.
Nor could any scoffer explain, as Jesus Himself so daringly foretold, why by telephone, aeroplane, and radio, by rail, horse, and foot, His words are piercing the densest forest, scaling the highest mountains, crossing the deepest seas and the wildest deserts, making converts in every nation, kindred, tongue, and people on earth.
No doubter could tell me how this isolated Jew could utter words at once so simple that a child can understand them and so deep that the greatest thinkers cannot plumb their shining depths. The life, the words, the character of this strange Man are the enigma of history. Any naturalistic explanation makes Him a more puzzling paradox, a fathomless mystery.
But I learned that the paradox was made plain, and the mystery was solved, when I accepted Him simply for what He claimed to be: the son of God come from heaven, a Savior of men. And I learned to thrill at the angels’ words, ‘Behold! Unto you a savior, Christ the Lord!’. And now I have learned the great truth that, though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born, if He is not born in me, my soul is still forlorn.
~ joanie 
