The story of Christmas begins, not with the manger of Bethlehem, but many thousands, perhaps millions of years before, in the mind and heart of God. “I’m lonely,” James Weldon Johnson has God say in his play, God’s Trombones. “I think I’ll make me a world.” That’s exactly what God did. God made a world . . . a beautiful garden world with birds singing and flowers blooming, mountain streams flowing and mighty oceans glistening under a bright golden sun. In the midst of that garden, God placed a man and a woman His highest creation with every good thing to sustain life.

That first man and woman should have lived happily ever after. So should we all. But it was readily apparent that there was a problem in paradise . . . a problem within the heart of humanity. For, you see, God created man and woman in His own image. God created man and woman, not to be puppets in a paradise, but to be God’s partners.

Maybe James Weldon Johnson was right. Maybe God was lonely, for God created humans to mirror many of His own attributes. He created these beings with the potential for spiritual communion with Himself. The critical attribute that he gave to humanity was the ability to choose to choose . . . life or death . . . good or evil . . . darkness or light. What a gamble God took in order to create beings with whom He could have fellowship . . . for He gave these new human creatures even the ability to reject His own eternal love.

Every parent knows the risk. We would not make robots of our children even if we could. Love without the possibility of rejection is not love at all.

Thus, God gave man and woman the power to choose. Thomas Carlyle once summed up our nature like this: “There are depths in man that go to the lowest hell, and heights that reach the highest heaven; Are not both heaven and hell made out of him, everlasting miracle and mystery that he is?”

As soon as human beings appear on earth, the struggle for their identity begins to surface. Would they strive for the stars or would they be content to grovel in the mud from which they were created?

Norman Vincent Peale, in one of his books, told about a play that Nathaniel Hawthorne outlined but never wrote. It was to be a play in which the principal character never appears. Dr. Peale goes on to note: “It is tragic to think of a man on the stage of life playing only minor parts. He is the bigot, the coward, the defeated person, the liar, or the cheat. But for a man never to play the principal character within himself, that is tragic. Never to perceive and act the hero in his life; never to be the saint in him, that is a tragedy; never to have the principal character appear.”

You and I know about that struggle Dr. Peale described . . . for it is a struggle going on within our own hearts. The Biblical record is the history of a Divine Lover seeking to woo and win His own creation. It is also, however, the history of a war going on within the soul of humanity a war that brings alienation between human beings and their neighbors and human beings and their God.

There is almost immediately within the first human family jealousy, resentment, and even murder. Humanity’s record does not improve from here. Each generation is as bad as the first. Certainly here and there a noble and faithful man or woman appears. There was Abraham who heard God’s voice and, together with his wife Sarah, went off into a distant land to begin a new people. Then there was a remarkable son of Israel named Joseph who trusted God even when his own brothers sold him into slavery. In jail in Egypt he still believed that God was with him and with that faith and confidence, he so managed his life that soon he was No. 2 man in all of Egypt.

There were many others, or course. Great leaders like Moses and Joshua and David and most notably the prophets Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and many others of great faithfulness. We dare not forget persons such as Ruth and Naomi and millions of other good, kind, decent people whose names never made it into the Biblical record. It is absurd to think that the world was inhabited only by savages before the time of Christ. There have always been generous hearts and souls in every generation. Still, on the whole, humanity’s record upon earth was a dismal one. There were times, even as today, when evil seemed much stronger than good when love seemed to be swallowed up by hatred when men ruled by the sword and might was often mistaken for right. The world was in darkness and the greatest darkness was in the heart of human beings.

Only the Hebrew prophets could see that God was not finished with His creation. God’s love and desire for fellowship with humanity had not changed. He would complete the work that He had begun at the creation of the world. But this time He would disguise His intent in the form of a tiny Babe.

As far back as the prophet Nathan there was a growing realization that God would send a messenger, a deliverer, a Savior. The same Nathan who confronted David concerning his adultery with Bathsheba delivered a promise. It was a word of hope for David and all humankind:

“When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his father and, he shall be my son . . . And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever.” (II Samuel 7: 12 14a, 16RSV).

Other prophets picked up the theme, notably the prophet Isaiah: “Out of the house of David shall come a Savior . . . A virgin shall conceive . . . the government shall be upon his shoulders . . . he shall feed his flock like a shepherd . . . he will come with righteousness and judge the earth . . . The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light . . . .”

That our story should move at this point to a stable in Bethlehem of Judea is one of the deepest of human mysteries. There, waiting patiently, is the soon-to-be mother perhaps no older than sixteen years of age. Her name is Mary. An angel had appeared to her in a dream and asked her to believe the incredible that she was to be a mother and yet remain a virgin and that the son she would bear would be the Savior of the world. That would be too much for the unbelieving heart to contain, but Mary believed the angel and answered without hesitation, “I am the Lord’s servant, may your word to me be fulfilled” (Luke 1:38).

There beside Mary in the stable stands her husband a patient and loving man named Joseph. Joseph believes in his young bride nearly as strongly as he believes in God. Some sheep and oxen and a lowly donkey complete the scene. Later they will be joined by some unruly shepherds who will claim to have been serenaded by angels as they guarded their sheep on a hillside. And still later will come three magi from the east bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. “We have seen his star,” they will say, “and have come to worship him.”

What does it all mean? The writer of the Gospel of John tries to tell us in beautiful, but somewhat deep, theological language: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it . . .  The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Soren Kirkegaard, the Danish theologian of more than a century ago, gave us a simple parable to help us more easily understand. He tells a story of a prince who was riding through a rather poor section of a certain city in his kingdom. Looking through the curtains of his royal carriage he caught glimpse of the most beautiful maiden he had ever seen. Soon he found excuses to drive near the spot where his eyes had beheld her on the chance that he might see her again. Before long he was strongly infatuated with her. He desperately desired to ask her hand in marriage. But how should he go about it?

Of course, as the prince, he could order her to the palace and command her to be his wife. But what kind of marriage would that be? Again, he thought that he might masquerade as a peasant. Then when he had won her interest he would pull off his mask, as it were, and reveal his true identity. Such trickery, however, did not appeal to the prince.

Finally he hit upon the most noble solution of all. He would lay aside his kingly robe. He would move into her neighborhood. He would take up a vocation . . . say as a carpenter. He would live as she lived. He would get to know her friends, learn to talk their language. Hopefully, then, in the natural course of things, he would meet his beloved and gain her friendship, then her trust and admiration, and finally, her love. This the prince did, and finally when her love was won, his beloved came to know his true identity.

Is this not the true meaning of Christmas? Out of the loneliness of God a world was born. Out of the love of God a Savior was born. When we in our fallen state could not come to God, God came to us on our own terms, speaking our language.

So you see, the Christmas story did not begin 2,000 years ago. It began as soon as God saw that human beings, in their power to choose, would rather destroy themselves and all the world around them rather than acknowledge the self-giving love for which they were created.

It is also important to see that the Christmas story does not end at the stable of Bethlehem either. For the Savior is still trying to find entrance into human hearts. God is still seeking to woo His beloved creation. The Christmas story is God’s love being made manifest afresh in human lives daily.

But even there the story does not end. It is not enough that individual hearts should be won. Christmas is not only the celebration of the individual heart in union with God, it is also the celebration of the family the human family. The angels sang about “Peace on earth and goodwill to men.” Christmas is an acknowledgement that the story will not end until we regard every person on earth as of equal worth as ourselves, for we are all part of the family of God.

Traveling back to Earth, having just walked on the moon, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell had an experience for which nothing in his life had prepared him. Mitchell gazed through the window of his space capsule at his home, a small distant planet called Earth. He saw for the first time from that perspective that we are truly one family.

William Sloan Coffin, Jr., commenting on Mitchell’s experience wrote: “I was thrilled once to hear him tell his tale, but I couldn’t help thinking, ‘You shouldn’t have had to go to the moon to have that vision; it’s enough to go to Bethlehem.’ For the message of Bethlehem is that all human beings are members of one family, brothers and sisters of the Holy Child.”

The story of Christmas is not finished, and it will not be finished until the star that shone over the stable on that night of night shines in the heart of every man, woman and child upon this earth the star that gives hope and dignity and meaning to all our lives the star of a loving God who created us for communion with one another and with Him.