***{Jesus Christ}***

As with every season there is an end, how many of us pack up our charity and good will, with the Christmas decorations? Of all the symbols of Christmas, Jesus Christ is the most important, He is the reason for this glorious time of year. And the most wonderful thing is that He lives!! And yet as winter fades to spring the great day of His birth is forgotten and put aside. So for that reason I waited until after Christmas was done before posting this. Jesus Christ is not like the pretty things we pull out of the box for December and then put away again. He is the reason we are here, He is the reason that our salvation has been paid for. Because he was born we can live again

It's hard sometimes for me picture Jesus Christ as a child, mostly because there is not much said about him. But His birth holds so much meaning!

"... a manger is a box made to hold food for animals, a feeding trough! ... I imagined a manger filled with oats that beasts of burden hungrily devoured. They, like me, would eat and in a few hours want more. No matter how nutritious earthly fare is, it is never enough. The next day, even the next hour, the stomach growls for more. In my mind’s eye I saw hands brushing away the last few oats. The same hands filled the manger with fresh straw and placed the Babe in the feeding trough. Words leaped to mind: “He that cometh to me shall never hunger” and “He that eateth of this bread shall live for ever” (John 6:35, 58). The heavenly fare offered in the manger was not only eternal but capable of lifting us to God. How fitting that Mary should cradle her son, the Bread of Life, in a manger.

I thought of Mary, His mother. The intense emotion of birth was familiar to me, but Mary was the mother of God’s child. I thought of the joy and the sorrow she bore and wondered what her feelings were as she wrapped the Son of God in swaddling clothes.

Oh, the swaddling clothes! As Mary beheld Him in the manger, did her heart race with premonitions of a time when she would see Him wrapped in linen and laid in another cave, called a sepulchre? In a stable-cave Mary gave Jesus mortal life, and from a sepulchre-cave Jesus came forth to give Mary and all mankind immortal life. Both caves are mortal reminders of Jesus’ condescension, or of His descending “below all things” (see 1 Ne. 11:16; D&C 88:6).

His condescension is difficult to understand. He was God “but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (Philip. 2:7). The same verse in the Greek New Testament does not mention reputation but instead says that He “emptied himself.” He was God, yet He emptied himself of power to begin anew, growing from grace to grace. He was the Word, and yet He came as a wordless infant. He was the Almighty One, and yet helplessly He took nourishment at Mary’s breast. He was King of Kings, and yet He came as the servant of man. He, the great I Am, condescended to be the beast upon which all burdens would fall, born among animals at Passover time.

I thought of the significance of the Passover. As families throughout the land prepared their symbolic meal of lamb, the Lamb of God was being born, and because of His living and His dying, the nullifying effects of death would pass over us." {Ensign 1998 "The Bread of Life"}

I hope that through out this next year we keep the Savior close to us. Remembering that because of His birth, His death, and His resurrection, we can live again with our Heavenly Father.

{Pictures by Joseph Bricky and Del Parson}