THE BETHLEHEM STORY

A senior angel is showing a very young angel around the splendors of the universe. They view whirling galaxies and blazing suns, and then flit across the infinite distances of space until at last they enter one particular galaxy of 500 billion stars.

As the two of them drew near to the star which we call our sun and to its circling planets, the senior angel pointed to a small and rather insignificant sphere turning very slowly on its axis. It looked as dull as a dirty tennis-ball to the little angel, whose mind was filled with the size and glory of what he had seen. " I want you to watch that one particularly", said the senior angel pointing with his finger.

"Well it looks very small and rather dirty to me",

said the little angel, "what special about that one?".

To the little angel, though, earth did not seem impressive. He listened in stunned disbelief as the senior angel told him that this planet, small and insignificant and not overly clean, was the renowned Visited Planet.

"Do you mean that our great and glorious Prince... went down in person to this fifth-rate little

ball? Why should he do a thing like that?"......

The little angel's face wrinkled in disgust.

"Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that He stooped so low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?"

" I do, and I don't think He would like you to call them 'creeping', 'crawling creatures' in that tone of voice. For strange as it may seem to us, He loves them. He went down to visit them to lift them up to become like Him."

The little angel looked blank, such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension.

GOD, who knows no boundaries took on the shocking confines of a baby's skin, the ominous restraints of mortality. "He is the image of the invisible GOD, the firstborn over all creation" an apostle would later write; "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." But the few eyewitnesses on Christmas night saw none of them. They saw an i n f a n t s t r u g g l i n g to work never before used lungs.

Could it be true, this Bethlehem story of a Creator descending to be born on one small planet? If so, it is a story like no other. Never again need we wonder whether what happens on this dirty little tennis ball of a planet matters to the rest of the universe. Little wonder a choir of angels broke out in spontaneous song, disturbing not only a few shepherds but the entire universe.

(Excerpt from : The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey)