🎄 Our 2023 Christmas Card

On the front of this year’s Christmas Card, we have a verse that I’ve carried with me for years — one that keeps pulling me back every time I read it:

Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.

1 Corinthians 2:9

This is an Old Testament quote from Isaiah 64:4 (featured on the back of the card):

For since the beginning of the world
Men have not heard nor perceived by the ear,
Nor has the eye seen any God besides You,
Who acts for the one who waits for Him.

Isaiah 64:4

Two passages. One mystery. The same God speaking across centuries.

The context of the 1 Corinthians passage makes it clear that “the things which God has prepared” is referring to the wisdom and mystery of God’s sending of His One and Only Begotten Son — the wonderful Christmas event, the best gift in the world. Indeed, although God had sent many prophets to His people about the coming Messiah, no one could imagine that the very Creator of the Universe, the Word Eternal, the Second Person of the Triune God (a truth I’ve explored in my own theological progression), would empty Himself by taking the form of a bondservant and being born in the likeness of men, even being found in appearance as a helpless Babe, cradled in a lowly manger inside a barn in Bethlehem, thus fulfilling the Scriptures. I’ve reflected before on why the Son of God truly had to die—the sacrifice that made this Gift possible.

I still struggle to wrap my mind around it. The Creator of everything — folded into a swaddling cloth.

A curious detail is that the quoted passage in 1 Corinthians (as recorded in Greek by Paul) is prima facie quite different from the original Isaiah passage. The OT passage seems to be talking about the invisible nature of the Godhead, and the NT passage seems to be talking about the Gift that God has prepared for those who love Him. But as I meditated on this further, this “discrepancy” between the two is in fact pointing to a greater truth, namely that the great Gift from God is the Gift of Immanuel, “God with Us”: that the Gift and the Giver is one and the same! A truth that calls for the fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ—the beginning of all wisdom.

You cannot unwrap the Gift without encountering the Giver.

That is what Christmas is really about. And what begins as a quiet wonder in the heart is meant to become a confession of faith spoken aloud—“I believed, therefore I spoke.”

Merry Christmas!🎄