Reading The Christmas Story

Reading the Christmas Story

Joseph named him Jesus.

Matthew 1:25

In her book Amazing Grace, the writer and poet Kathleen Norris shares what she calls “the scariest story” she’s ever heard about the Bible. Norris and her husband were visiting a man named Arlo, a rugged, self-made man who was facing terminal cancer. During their visit, Arlo started talking about his grandfather, a sincere Christian. The grandfather gave Arlo and his bride a wedding present: an expensive leather Bible with their names printed in gold lettering. Arlo left it in the box and never opened it. But for months afterwards his grandfather kept asking if he liked the Bible. Arlo told Norris, “The wife had written a nice thank-you note, and we’d thanked him in person, but somehow he couldn’t let it lie, he always had to ask about it.”

Finally, Arlo grew curious enough to open the Bible. “The joke was on me,” Arlo said. “I finally took that Bible out of the closet, and I found that granddad had placed a twenty-dollar bill at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, and at the beginning of every book . . . over thirteen hundred dollars in all. And he knew I’d never find it.”^a

Sometimes even those of us who rely on God’s Holy Word on a regular basis can become a tad like Arlo when it comes to reading the Christmas story. After all, we’ve likely read it countless times. But during these days of celebrating the birth of Jesus, we miss out on a reward if we don’t do our best to read it for the first time all over again. So take a moment right now, to do just that:

This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.

As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet: “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’”

When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus. (Matthew 1:18-25)

You can never truly enjoy Christmas until you can look up into the Father’s face and tell him you have received his Christmas gift.

—John R. Rice

^a 191