Christmas Conversations Day 6-8

Are there things that you find hard to believe? Stories friends have told you or something you heard on the radio or on t.v. or read in the newspaper? We already know that if you read it in the grocery store line or if it is posted on the internet, then it absolutely, positively MUST be true. I used to be really shy and hated to talk in front of people, do you believe it? The best route from Palm Springs, CA to Death Valley, CA takes you out of California and into two other states, Arizona and Nevada, and then back into California, do you believe it?

This whole virgin birth tale could be extremely hard to believe, it IS extremely hard to believe! Imagine Mary telling Joseph, in the Day 8 reading I was struck by the amount of courage it would have required and how difficult it would have been for young Mary to make sense of and then communicate the situation to others. I made a note on the page holding Day 6 that the virgin birth does not stand as an individual event. If this event stood alone as the only instance of something unique with Jesus, something that said to us this is God coming to be with us, if the miraculous birth of Jesus stood alone, who could say anything except, "Yeah, right!" But there is more to the story. Jesus calmed storms, he drove out demons, he healed the sick, he fed multitudes with next to nothing, he brought dead people back to life, he himself was dead and then alive! Again and again, Jesus demonstrated who he was and looking at the whole picture helps us to understand some of the individual events, like his miraculous birth.

Miracles. Maybe you believe in them, maybe you are skeptical, maybe you have experienced one or maybe you need one. I remember as I read this booklet for the first time Day 7 almost caused me not to use this as a resource to give to others. There is nothing wrong or false here. It's just that this talk of miracles is tough. Its a tough topic to tackle in one half of a page. Day 7 seems less conversational and more "what does he mean by that"... If miracles, don't exist then neither does God... To rule out miracles is more irrational than to believe... Those sentences may not answer a lot of questions, in fact they may provoke additional questions and thus serve as good conversation starters...