... the gospel accounts of the first Christmas ... Jesus was born far from home, with no midwife, extended family, or village chorus present. ... How many times did Mary review the angel's words as she felt the Son of God kicking against the walls of her uterus? ... We know nothing of Jesus' grandparents. What must they have felt? ... it seems that God arranged the most humiliating circumstances possible for his entrance, as if to avoid any charge of favoritism. ... And so Jesus the Christ entered the world amid strife and terror, and spent his infancy hidden in Egypt as a refugee. ... Unimaginably, the Maker of all things shrank down, down, down, so small as to become an ovum, a single fertilized egg barely visible to the naked eye, an egg that would divide and redivide until a fetus took shape, enlarging cell by cell inside a nervous teenager. ... The God who roared, who could order armies and empires about like pawns on a chessboard, this God emerged in Palestine as a baby who could not speak or eat solid food or control his bladder, who depended on a teenager for shelter, food, and love. ... A mule could have stepped on him. ...The God who created matter took shape within it, ... [t]he Word became flesh. ... How did God the Father feel that night, helpless as any human father, watching his Son emerge smeared with blood to face a harsh, cold world? ... God, who knows no before or after, entered time and space. God, who knows no boundaries took on the shocking confines of a baby's skin, the ominous restraints of mortality.

"The Jesus I Never Knew,"
by Philip Yancey