We can breathe in the sweet scent of a tepid summer’s meadow after the kiss of a warm rain, and in the very same moment we can stand utterly breathless underneath the expanse of untold galaxies that breech the very edges of the universe itself. Such are the privileges we enjoy because of God’s unimaginable imagination.

Yet it seemed that God would derive infinitely more pleasure and draw intimately closer to the likes of us by putting majesty squarely in a manger. God made the poverty of our existence the place of His home.

Do not be ashamed of who you are, for in doing so you are not taking into account the majesty of all that you are. And without any shred of doubt I know that you are a person of majesty, for in my innumerable years of working with people I have yet to find even one person who is not.

Some doubt the Christmas story, placing it as a piece of fiction penned to perpetuate a myth. And could it be that the majesty of this story is so utterly vast that fiction is the only way that they could restrain it sufficiently to keep it from commandeering their lives?

Often we don’t see the majesty of God’s design because we’re caught up in the mediocrity of our own designs.

The best way to see majesty is to strip away everything that pretends to be majestic so that which is fake wholly collapses in the face of that which is majestic. And God in a manger is likely the most remarkable example we have of such a monumental truth.

If I have not been both soothed by love and on the opposite extreme left devastated by it, I will never understand its power nor respect its majesty.

It is not summer surrendering. Rather it is summer coming to the grand culmination that it has spent months vigorously preparing for. For fall is the glory of summer in splendid display. Such are the celebrations that God creates, for the intense majesty of His irrepressible character can create nothing less.

Once I finally understand the immensity of my own impoverishment, I am finally in a position to see the enormity of God’s majesty.