Christmas Thoughts

In Christmases past I have fallen into the rut of thinking momentarily of the birth of Jesus before mentally moving on to the more significant acts that he would preform later in life. I would read the story of his birth and then continue onward, without pause, to think about the Atonement.

This year, my thoughts have followed a different track. I have not had any great epiphany of new knowledge, just the understanding that perhaps I have been passing over an event that does have more significance than just a nice story on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane, Calvary and the garden tomb.

This year I saw part of the movie The Nativity Story. I liked it. But one line really got me thinking. One of the wise men, upon arriving at the stable to see the baby Jesus (however historically inaccurate:) said with total awe of expression and voice "God made flesh!"

Babies are all extraordinary miracles but was there really something that set this baby apart from all others? That would inspire such awe in full grown men (not their parent) that had traveled hundreds of miles and months of time to see him?

I connected a couple of dots in my mind as I pondered on this.

Dot 1:
In 1 Nephi 11, the Spirit asks Nephi "Knowest thou the condescension of God?"

The scripture continues:

"And I said unto him: I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.
And he said unto me: Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh.
...And I looked and beheld the virgin again, bearing a child in her arms.
And the angel said unto me: Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father!"

God made flesh, just as the wise man proclaimed.

Later in the chapter it returns to this subject:

"And the angel said unto me again: Look and behold the condescension of God!
And I looked and beheld the Redeemer of the world, of whom my father had spoken; and I also beheld the prophet who should prepare the way before him. And the Lamb of God went forth and was baptized of him..."

Nephi was shown in vision many of the events in Christ's life, continuing the illustration of the condescension of God, all of which demonstrate Jesus' complete humility.

Dot 2:
Early in December I was reading Mosiah 14. Abinadi is quoting from the 53rd chapter of Isaiah.
He describes the Atonement:

"But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
All we, like sheep, have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquities of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb so he opened not his mouth.
He was taken from prison and from judgment; and who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgressions of my people was he stricken.
And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no evil, neither was any deceit in his mouth."

But what of the verses that came before, that were not in reference the the Atonement itself? They too describe the humility with which Jesus lived his life.

"For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground; he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire him.
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrow, and acquainted with grief; and we hid our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely, he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted."

His whole life was lived in such a humble manner that even before his experience in Gethsemane, he was acquainted with the sadness and sorrows that come with life. And yet he was a God.

Dot 3:
It seems that upon occasion I have met or heard of little babies that don't like to be little babies. You have that sense that it is exasperating for them to be in bodies that don't obey them or frustrating that they can't communicate as much as they would like. As they get older and things start to work they way they would like they seem to get happier and more content with life.

Did Jesus have that experience? We know he learned and grew 'from grace to grace' but surely it was at an accelerated rate compared to us. By age 12 he was teaching in the temple. Is that part of the condescension of God? That he would be frustrated by the limitations of the flesh? That he would endure them for years so that he could more fully comprehend how to succor us in our afflictions? Were they necessary preparation for the Atonement itself?

Jesus needed a body of flesh so that he could die. Perhaps his birth was significant not just because it provided that body, not just because it was a nice story of prophecy fulfilled on the way to the Atonement. Perhaps his birth was significant as a part of the Atonement, the condescension of God, preparing him, leading him to those events that have such eternal significance for mankind.

Perhaps I shouldn't pass over the birth of the Savior on my way to pondering the Atonement.

Maybe they are not as separate as I had thought.