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THE CURIOUS SIGN OF THE MANGER
Review copy only—not for distribution.
(moderately abbreviated though it might be) of
Crown Princess Mary of Denmark. An Aussie
girl from the Apple Isle becomes the soon-tobe-queen of a European nation. You can’t write
fiction that good! And yet as inconceivable as
that story might be (I know I keep using that
word, and I do know what it means), it does not
even begin to touch on the astonishing truths
that lie within the Bible, which speaks about the
birth of a tiny human child as the arrival to earth
of the eternal God of the universe.
Suddenly we are no longer speaking of a
distant and impersonal ‘Creator God’ who
watches us but is removed and uninvolved in
our conditions or circumstances. In this birth,
he is called “Immanuel”, which means “God with
us”, according to the ancient prophet Isaiah and
the evangelist Matthew, who wrote the account
of Jesus’ entire life in his Gospel. This is the
God who willingly and purposefully lays aside
the garments of his majesty, his might, eternity
and glory in order to become something as lowly
and accessible as a human. He is the sort of God
who doesn’t disdain or despise humanity or the
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