This year might be a good one to contemplate just how unlikely and yet inspiring the Christmas story is.
This year might be a good one to contemplate just how unlikely and yet inspiring the Christmas story is.
Christmas, of course, celebrates the birth of Jesus, who, Christians believe, came to Earth to save humankind from its multifarious sins and transgressions, to offer hope of salvation to those who believe. Yet the accretion of custom and the romanticization of the story sometimes keep us from seeing just how improbable, in terms of the ways of the world, this story is.
If one thinks as the world does, one might have expected such an important child, destined to be the savior of the world, to have been born in a royal palace, surrounded by servants and luxurious trappings. And surely such a personage would be born in one of the imperial political capitals of the world at the time.
Yet Jesus was born in a politically insignificant backwater of the leading empire of the time, Rome — a province acquired almost offhandedly and noted mainly for its capacity to irritate its rulers rather than contributing much to their splendor.
Instead of being born in a royal palace, Jesus was born in a stable or a cave, his parents having been turned away from every decent inn in town.
