Dear Theophilus:: December 2003

Come To Bethlehem and See

Come to Bethlehem and see, Him whose birth the angels sing
Come adore on bended knee, Christ the Lord the newborn king.

See him in a manger laid, Whom the choirs of angels praise
Mary, Joseph, lend your aid, While our hearts in love we raise.

-from Angels from the Realms of Glory

There is one Christmas that I will never forget of the two dozen or so in my life. It wasn't necessarily because of the time I got to spend with my family, friends from high school, or presents that were given and received. It wasn't even because of the relief that I felt after a difficult semester at school. It was actually something that I saw on TV on The Today Show that God used to remind me of what Christmas was.

It was one of my winter breaks in college, after a ton of exams and papers. I had been swamped by studies and had no desire to really do anything other than sleep and be a bum. So of course I woke up Christmas morning, wanting only to sleep in my warm toasty bed. I guess Christmas tends to lose its luster over time, but for my little sister, Christmas was still something fun and exciting. She somehow dragged me and the rest of my family downstairs to open gifts. So we all sat there in our zombie-like states, half-awake, opening gifts that we were too tired to properly thank each other for. The next thing I knew I found myself lying on the sofa staring at the TV watching The Today Show, like I did every other morning of my break.

This particular portion of the show, Katie Couric was doing a segment showing all the different areas around the world on Christmas morning. Then, they came to Bethlehem. The dirt streets were completely empty. The town they showed didn't seem like it could have been very different than when Jesus was born there. Suddenly, I couldn't believe that I was really looking at the town that Jesus was born in. That there was really a manger somewhere in that town, or the place where a manger once stood holding Jesus as a baby, and that Jesus actually walked those streets. I sat for a few moments in awe. That God - the God that created this universe simply by speaking, the God that created light and water - this very same GOD came as a newborn baby in this town.

God used a TV show to remind me of this simple truth. That He walked this earth in the form of a man, that He really lived this life that I read about in the Bible, that it's not all a fairytale, but that this amazing story of the gospel is real. And it began in a little town called Bethlehem.