And So This is Christmas . . .

"Since the creation of the world invisible realities, God's eternal power and divinity, have become visible, recognizable through the things God has made." Romans 1:20

I have always found this awareness to be one of the best arguments one can make for belief in our Creator, a Creator who had a particular design and love for his creation.

First, we must reflect on how the invisible realities--God's power and divinity—are manifested and become visible in this world. We mustn't limit ourselves by the phrase "through the things God has made" and assume a reference only to the physical beauty of the earth--the mountains and sky, trees and landscape. The things God has made includes--perhaps primarily--ourselves.

So, with that in mind, how then, through us, does God's eternal power and divinity become visible?

Is it simply through our sense of something (someone) supernatural?

Is it through the oft-called God incidences?

Or, is God's power and divinity revealed most profoundly when we cooperate with him, as when the Priest, through the power of the Holy Spirit, consecrates the communion bread or when we love selflessly, going against our seemingly almost-natural tendency to put self interests first?

We can easily comprehend the revelation of God's power and divnity in our sense of the supernatural and in the coincidences that force us to look to God when no earthly conclusion can be drawn, but it is in the last example that I think we can most clearly see God, for to love unconditionally, where our own personal, strongest inclinations are put aside on behalf of others, is to see all that God is about.

When we love, that is a reflection of God. We can know that because that is how God was revealed in the incarnation. Continuing from the cross, that self-sacrifice that goes far beyond mere human capactiy, and joins God and man in one great act of love, speaks definitively of God's power and divinity.

And so this is Christmas . . . God's invisible realities becoming recognizable in an infant in a manger, in the person of Jesus on the cross bringing salvation to all the world, and in his people, learning to love anew.