One day in an art class, as the teacher was going around the various paintings to look at what the children were doing, she asked a boy what it was he was painting. The wee boy said to her, “I’m painting a picture of God.” “But we don’t know what God looks like,” the teacher replied. “Well,” said the boy, “come back when I’ve finished and you’ll find out!”

With the arrival of the Lord Jesus in Bethlehem, God took a brush and painted on the canvas of history what He Himself was really like. When Christ appeared, He rendered obsolete all previous guesses about God’s nature, and He rendered arrogant all subsequent ones.

The writer to the Hebrews put it this way: “At many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2). In other words, through the prophets of old, God had spoken a multifaceted and varied word, weaving His character and His nature all through the pages of the Old Testament. But in Bethlehem, God spoke in a personified Word. The long-awaited Messiah, the Light of the nations, appeared—and in that tiny little baby, God made manifest His reality.

Just think: in that Bethlehem manger lay God… wiggling His toes! The baby that nursed at the breast of Mary and was rocked to sleep in the arms of Joseph was God, and He remains God. Is it any wonder that the shepherds went out and spread the word? Is it any wonder that the wise men of His day bowed in worship before Him?

Jesus came to make the Father known. May our hearts be so humbled by the incarnation that we come to know God personally, not merely intellectually. Like the shepherds, we have the message of Christ’s advent to share with our society. As we spread the good news of Jesus’ coming as the Messiah, as the one who is God and has come to make God known, pray that the wisdom of our world may bow before His glory. Do you know Jesus as your Lord? Then—praise God—you have seen, and you know, His Father.