One of the most important--if not the most important--question anyone can ask is this: "How does God relate to the world?" If you were to ask that question yo a random group of people, say at a mall or a public gathering of some kind, you would get all kinds of answers.

Some would say that God created the world, then withdrew--and isn't all that interested in what's going on.  Others would say that God may have been powerful enough to make everything, but he certainly isn't strong enough to stop all the suffering and evil in the world. Still others would say that the question is irrelevant, because there's really no God anyway, although it's okay to believe in some sort of "cosmic power" if it helps you sleep at night.

If by chance there were someone in the crowd who really understood what the Bible says about God, and if this person were confident enough to give an answer that isn't all that popular these days, here's what you would hear: Jesus Christ.

Jesus is both the Christian answer and also the Christmas answer to the question, "How does God relate to the world?", because Jesus is God in human form. He is "the visible image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15). The theological term for the process of God taking on human form is incarnation, which comes from a Latin word meaning "taking" or "being flesh." In the Bible the concept of the incarnation is best expressed in John 1:14: "So the Word became human and made his home among us."

This verse, where Jesus is referred to as the living Word of God, also conveys the idea that God became a human so he could come to earth and live among us. That's the essence of the name give to Jesus by the prophet Isaiah: Immanuel, which means "God with us." What powerful words! John MacArthur has said, "If we condense all the truths of Christmas into only three words, these would be the words."

Imagine the Creator of the universe taking on human form--the form of a baby--so that he could be with us? It's not that we're all that great to be around. We make mistakes and say the wrong things. Some of us say nasty things about God, while others prefer to think he doesn't exist. As humans, we can be an unsavory bunch, yet the all-powerful, all-knowing, completely holy and faithful Creator willingly came in the form of a frail baby to hang out with us--literally to "pitch his tent" among us--so he could show us a better way to live.

Because of Jesus, we know that God is with us. We also know that God loves us and that God is for us. Even more, because Jesus is God, we have someone who can save us--because he lived a perfect life and became the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

Because Jesus is human, he can identify with our weaknesses. We don't have to worry that God is detached from our world, not caring about us. He knows what we are going through, and he is able to help us in our distress.

Excerpt from God Is in the Small Stuff at Christmas by Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz