WHAT CHILD IS THIS?
By Ada Nicholson Brownell
Can
you imagine the chaos if identification on newborns in large hospitals
disappeared?
“Whose
baby is this?” nurses would say over and over as an expert checked tiny
footprints.
“What
Child is this?” often is asked near Christmas. William Chatterton Dix, struck
with a near-fatal illness at age 29 asked the question. Confined to his bed for
months in 1865, he looked to Jesus, the babe born in Bethlehem so many years
before. Was the Christ child different from everyone else born into the world?
Some
people put Jesus on the same level as Mother Theresa, Mahatma Ghandi, the Pope,
Moses and other famous religious personalities. Some religions teach Jesus was
a great prophet, but deny His deity. Author Josh McDowell says in his book, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, that Jesus
can’t be identified as a great moral teacher because He claimed to be God. “He
is either a liar, lunatic or the Lord.”[1]
Who
was the babe in the manger?
Dix
searched for an answer to the question and wrote a song titled “What Child is
this?” set to the music of Greensleeves,
a 16th Century English tune.
Down
through the centuries people asked, “Who is Jesus?”
Scripture
reveals who the Child is. My Bible has 1,448 pages filled with the story of the
Messiah-Redeemer—promised right after Adam and Eve became subject to sickness
and death.[2] God
warned the couple if they ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they
would die.
Satan,
taking the body of a serpent, told Eve, “You won’t die. It’s good.
Try it.”
The
couple took the reptile’s advice and the venom of Satan’s lie fills every urn and
grave since then. Adam and Eve understood sin’s tragedy when they grieved at
the grave of a dead son, killed by his brother.
Although
God’s justice required severe consequences for sin, He promised redemption as
soon as as the first couple disobeyed. Sin is so terrible God required blood to
forgive it. Beautiful animals lay over altars, blood dripping over the stones,
until God gave His one and only Son as The Promised Redeemer who showed up on earth
in the body of a tiny baby.
Prophets testified about the details of the Messiah’s birth, death
and resurrection thousands of years before He came.
Jesus
was unlike any baby born. He was God in human flesh, yet we are invited to know
Him personally. According to Rev. 3:19-21, Jesus stands outside the
door to our lives and knocks. He
says, “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him. The last chapter of
Revelation declares, “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ Whoever is thirsty,
let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of
life.”
What
Child is this? Humankind’s only hope.
***
MATTHEW 4:16 IS A FLASH OF INSIGHT SHINING
FORTH all year, but especially this season. “The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a
light has dawned. For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the
government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called, Wonderful,
Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Matthew 4:16).
©Ada Brownell 2013
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