The NIV 365 Day Devotional

Jesus: Immanuel, God With Us

He could have given up. No one would have known otherwise. Jesus could have given up. One look at the womb could have discouraged him. God is as unbridled as the air and as limitless as the sky. Would he reduce his world to the belly of a girl for nine months?

And nine months? There is another reason to quit. Heaven has no months. Heaven has no time. Or, perhaps better said, heaven has all the time. It’s we who are running out. Our time passes so quickly that we measure it by the second. Wouldn’t Christ rather stay on the other side of the ridge of time?

And the stable. Is that not yet another reason for Christ to back out? Stables are smelly, dirty. Stables have no linoleum floors or oxygen tanks. How are they going to cut the umbilical cord? And who is going to cut the umbilical cord? Joseph? A small-time carpenter from a one-camel town? Is there not a better father for God? Someone with an education, a pedigree. Someone with a bit of clout? This fellow couldn’t even swing a room at the hotel. You think he’s got what it takes to be the father to the maker of the universe?

Jesus could have given up. Imagine the change he had to make, the distance he had to travel. What would it be like to become flesh?

Love goes the distance…and Christ traveled from limitless eternity to be confined by time in order to become one of us. He didn’t have to. He could have given up. At any step along the way he could have called it quits.

He didn’t, because he is love. And love “always perseveres” (1Co 13:7 NIV). He endured the distance. What’s more, he endured the resistance.

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory” (Jn 1:14).

Taken from The NIV Lucado Encouraging Word Bible.