What if you and I could be eyewitnesses to the day of Christ birth?

Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (1st coming, a prophecy of Messiah Yeshua's virgin birth, refer to: Isaiah 8-10

One of my all time favorite movies is 'It's a wonderful life’, about a man who is given a second chance of seeing how his life impacted everyone around him and thinking twice about throwing it away when problems and pain surfaced.

My favorite song is 'Dear younger me', which is about what we might tell our younger selves the things so they could avoid the pain their older selves endured.   

There are no do-overs in life because life is a first run production.   Fortunately, we have a Savior that can make all things new again when we mess up, screw up, or suffer consequences we wished we hadn't.

Imagine, if you will, if you could travel back in time to the very moment that Jesus was born.  If when we turn in for the night we wake up moments later with the taste of animal stench in our nostrils and some prickly hay beneath our feet.  You stumble to find your glasses so you could see what was going on.

“What’s this,” you ask. “Why am I smelling the stench of animals?”  You walk toward the bedroom door, grasp the handle turning it until the door opened. As the door opens, nothing seems familiar. You don’t see the familiar hallway leading to the bathroom on your right and the kitchen to the left. You don’t see the familiar family black Labrador retriever with its tail wagging and it’s never ending quench for hugs and kisses. You feel the unevenness of the surface beneath your feet, almost as if you were in a barn.

As you walk into this room, you feel the cool breeze, and the subtle light from the moon and a glorious ray of light shining in the direction of a feeding trough. As you walk toward the man and woman who were not dressed as you might dress today, but in clothes that were akin to another era.

You mutter to yourself, but you soon discover that no one hears you.  You stand momentarily as you watch some shepherds, with sheep in tow, standing and then kneeling beside the feeding trough which to your surprise held a little baby wrapped in a blanket making those little baby sounds you have become accustomed to in life.

As you focus on this little baby, you watch with wonder as 3 men came up and like the shepherds knelt and bow down one by one before this little baby, as though this baby held some important and historical purpose.

It was that point, you began to see the connection between this baby ‘Jesus’ and what it meant for you personally.  Your mind dwells on the very moment of your own acceptance of Jesus in your life.  

You remember the moment when life had lost it's meaning and purpose when your tears began  flowing so freely that you cried out to Jesus, the savior of the world, and opened the door to your heart and invited him to come in and take control.

You kneel before the feeding trough holding this wonderful baby Jesus and in a prayer you give thanks. “Thank you for saving me Jesus and coming into my heart when I messed up. Thank you for forgiving me for all the times I neglected you because of my busyness.  I know you wanted to spend time with me to show me how much my life meant to you.  I know how much you wanted to give me an encouraging word from the greatest book ever written.”

As you slowly get up, wiping the tears from your cheek, you watched a ray of light shining on this baby Jesus, as though God was reminding you of the importance of this new born baby.   You remembered how much God loved you and wanted to have a personal relationship with you.

It seemed almost surreal to think that God loved you so much that He chose to enter the world through a simple working class couple as a baby lying in a feeding trough.  While the world worships wealth, status, and prestigious titles, God taught us about humility and value of human life and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Because of what Christ did for all of us, our lives do not have to be defined by our losses after loved ones die, nor by the state of our finances, nor by tragedies that seem to mar our existence. 

Because of what God did when he brought this baby Jesus into the world, his message to all of us is that he wants to walk with you on your life’s journey, no matter what life dishes up. 

Life is truly a journey and our life isn’t defined by our circumstances, good or bad, but by God revealing to us through his son Jesus the things we need to know to get through each day.

Then it occurred to you that in the very words of the bible are the actual eyewitness accounts given to you by the prophets that God chose to use to bring his message.  You glance across the living room to your leather-bound bible resting on the bookcase. 

You grabbed the book and recline in your chair and begin reading another eyewitness account from the book of Matthew