AMAZING!  Jim Alter, Grace Baptist Church - Sidney, Ohio

Amazing is a superlative which like most superlatives today is diminished by overuse. Amazing! is attached to items as mundane as toothpaste and toys; sandwiches and soap; fabric and fruit.

As I examined the Christmas story with fresh eyes this year, one word continued to explode upon my consciousness: Amazing!

It is amazing that God chooses to use small people in small places to accomplish inconceivably great things. Shepherds, carpenters, young girls, Nazareth, Bethlehem, who ever would have imagined that God would change the world—no, save the world employing such seemingly insignificant tools? Amazing!

It is amazing that the God who chooses such small people in such small places would shape an entire Empire for the singular purpose of enabling these small people to carry out their ordained purposes according to His supreme will. Amazing!

It is amazing that God would employ a pagan king, have him decree a census, have that decree require all citizens to return to their ancestral cities on roads built and guarded by soldiers conscripted by said king so that the seemingly smallest of prophecies could come to fruition as the true King was born in the smallest of places. Bethlehem. Amazing!

It is amazing that the God who so rules the world that He is able to effortlessly mobilize entire kingdoms in order to aid the smallest of people did not provide a room in the inn. He could have. Christ could have been born in a palace. He could have called ten thousand angels. He could have demanded respect and love, He could have crippled kings and subdued kingdoms, he could have said no to the suffering, He could have said never to the humiliation, He could have said, "I am the creator and I choose to abandon the creation!" but he didn’t. He came and took on flesh and bones and was laid in a filthy manger. Amazing!

It is amazing that the God who is powerful enough to accomplish all of these feats and is patient enough to endure all of these humiliations and is gracious enough to lavish us with His mercy and love is mocked and blasphemed and ignored on the very day chosen to honor Him. Amazing!
It is amazing that all we have to do to have eternal life is to confess our sin to the Saviour, believe that He is God as demonstrated by His resurrection from the dead and that He is the only way to God the Father. Amazing!

Let believers in Christ so live this Christmas season that the world will look at us, see our devotion, our dedication, our courage, our humility, our kindness, our grace and our love one for another that all they will be able to say is, Amazing!