As men and women of faith, Christmas means a lot of different things to us. It’s a season of hope, love, and promise. It’s a time of stillness, joy, and praise. It’s about peace. But if you boil it down to its very essence, Christmas is really about one thing.

The birth of Jesus Christ is the quiet and stunning moment in time when God became human.

As Max Lucado ponders in his book An Angel’s Story: “Jesus entered our world not like a human but as a human. He endured puberty, pimples, hot weather, and cranky neighbors. God became human down to his very toes. He had suspended the stars and ladled out the seas, yet he suckled a breast and slept in hay.”

Why did he do this?

God is all powerful, all knowing, and perfect. Why would He come to us as a human being, with all the limitations that come with being human?

Hundreds and hundreds of books can be written on this topic – God became human to save us, to die for us, to help us know God and become more like Him. I believe one of the reasons God did this was to understand our suffering. Jesus entered a world filled with the vast range of human emotions…including pain. He experienced it himself. He cried tears of grief and sorrow when his friend Lazarus died. He felt the brutal betrayal of Judas Iscariot. He experienced the pain of each nail as he was crucified. I don’t believe there’s any measure of pain we experience that Jesus didn’t experience too during his time on earth.

God does not want us to see Him as a remote and distant figure. He wants our relationship with Him to be everything. He wants to know everything about us and feel everything that we feel. This was accomplished in Jesus Christ and the life he lived on earth. As Max Lucado goes on to say: “He wants you to know that he gets you. He understands how you feel and has faced what you face.”

As the Christmas season comes to an end, let us contemplate the wonderful gift that God has given us in His Son, Jesus Christ.