O Come, Let Us Adore

He could have chosen to come another way. He could have come in a powerful storm or with a flash of bright light. He could have appeared as a fully grown powerful man and instantly gained the respect of a vast following. As my French devotional book said on Christmas morning, "He could have appeared suddenly like a glorious man with all the marks of honor." 

But he didn't. 

He came like a tiny, innocent baby. He came with a sweet cry in the middle of an otherwise silent night. He was held by the hands that he created. Nobody would have even known it happened had it not been for the angels, who of course didn't announce it to the whole world but rather to a regular collection of ordinary shepherds. 

"You will find a sign," the angelic host announced, but it wasn't the star. It wasn't a bright light shining over a stable in Bethlehem. The sign was this: "You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." 

This seemingly ordinary, yet wonderfully miraculous sign would ultimately be fulfilled at a much later time. An innocent baby, wrapped in clothes and lying in a manger was the same baby who would become a man. An innocent man who died on a cross and was wrapped in cloths and laid in a tomb. 

A baby who was born to die. 

He could have come miraculously, but he chose a humble beginning which was the start of a humble journey to the cross. 

"What a subject of adoration!" my French devotional concluded. I can't think of anything more important to write about this morning as we live in the wake of Christmas festivities. 

I am sitting here at the kitchen table with a warm cup of coffee, watching the sun turn the snow from night-time blue to a brilliant shining white. I am humming Christmas songs to myself and recounting one from Elevation Worship that has become my favorite this season. One line simply says, "O come, let us adore the One who came for us." 

He is the "thrill of hope" for which "a weary world rejoices." O come, let us adore the One who came for us.