Each year we celebrate the birth of Jesus. God becoming a human. Born to a virgin. Both of these statements are important but do we truly comprehend the miracle?

Before we talk about these points let’s look at the universe first. It is said to be 92 billion light-years across. The Milky Way portion of the universe is only 100,000 light-years across and 1,000 light-years thick. My eyes are crossed trying to picture this. Since a light-year is not an easily grasped concept, I found the earthly measurement equivalent for the Milky Way – 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 km across. That’s a humongous amount of zeros. Still incomprehensible, don’t you think? And, yet, it was created by The Holy Trinity, who have to be larger than The Milky Way to have created it.

This is mind boggling to me to think just how big The Holy Trinity is.

Now, imagine Jesus living in that enormous state allowing Himself to shrink down to the size of an embryo. To be confined for nine months in the womb of an unwed young teenage girl.

Which brings up the next question. Why is the virgin status of Mary so important? If we look back at Leviticus 15:19-24 we learn that the menstrual flow of a female made her ceremonially unclean. Reading through Leviticus we also learn that to approach God one had to be ceremonially clean or risk death. The people had to consecrate themselves before joining Moses in a meeting with God. (Exodus 19) The priest had to sanctify themselves to work in the temple. (Exodus 28) So, being clean and untouched by a man was key to choosing Mary as the mother of Jesus.

Her womb became His dwelling place – just like the temple was the dwelling place of God’s presence in the Old Testament. Likewise, when Jesus was born, as God He needed a clean birth canal to enter the world as a baby. Anything less than clean and pure would cause the death of the the unclean areas. As a baby boy, His humanity was the grace needed for all who came into contact with Him. No one had to clean up to see Him, or speak with Him, or touch Him.

This is the miracle of Christmas.

Asking Jesus to be part of our life allows us – just as we are – to have contact with The Almighty and not die. Covered by Jesus we can enter the presence of The Father and worship Him and talk to Him and hear The Spirit guiding us.

What a Christmas miracle! Treasure the birth celebrations of Jesus coming to earth as a baby. Marvel in the hope that He brought with His birth.