A new birth in a royal family usually comes with great pomp and fanfare. There is massive media saturation and a lot of celebration. But not in this case. He came as a King and His birth could have been in a castle. Yet the babe born in the barn to parents who were both unknown and poor arrived with little worldly notice. Nobody sent flowers. No nursemaid helped with his diapers. The few gifts He received would come much later.
Why should we even give attention to this birth? Because heaven’s own heart had beat in the womb of a young woman for the previous nine months. Most likely just a young teenager herself, she was full of a faith far greater than the years she had known. Out of her body came God’s omnipotence cloaked in man’s limitation.
Her child was flesh, bones, sinew, and blood. Yet He was also the perfection of Deity. He felt hunger because He was fully human, yet He would later feed five thousand because He was fully God (Luke 9:10-17). He grew thirsty because He was fully human, yet He would one day walk on water because He was fully God (John 6:16-21). Tutored by a peasant girl and a carpenter, we read that He grew in knowledge (Luke 2:52), yet He also knew what others thought.
The mother was Mary. The child was Jesus. And His was a birth like no other, for in Him God took on human flesh.