Eternal Impact

The virgin-born baby was God in human form. He humbled Himself, He took the form of a servant, He was made in your likeness and mine, He identified Himself with the problems of the human race. And thus it was that the apostle John wrote, “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, as of the only begotten of the Father.)” (John 1:14 KJV)
In the early days of the 19th century, the world was following, with fear & trembling, the march of Napoleon across Europe. Day after day, they waited with impatience, fo the latest news of the wars. And no one was paying any attention to the babies that were being born. In just one year, lying midway between Trafalgar and Waterloo, there came into the world a host of heroes. During that year of 1809, listen to the list of people who were born that year — when everybody was pre-occupied with the problems of Napoleon: Gladstone was born in Liverpool, England; Alfred Tennyson was born in Somersby, England; Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Frederic Chopin was born in Warsaw, Poland; Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, Germany; and Abraham Lincoln was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky. But nobody thought about babies. Everybody was thinking about battles.
Yet, over 200 years later, with a truer perspective which the years enable us to command, we can ask ourselves, “Which of the battles of 1809 were more important than the babies of 1809?”

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
                                    (John 1:1-5) NIV

What a difference the baby born in Bethlehem’s manger 2000 years ago makes to our world today. The educational systems He has inspired, the social reforms that His teachings have instituted, & the transformation of families and lives that have come about as a result of His birth! The whole world was thinking about Rome & Caesar, but in God’s eternal plan, He was thinking of a baby in a manger in the tiny little town of Bethlehem.