Genesis 1:3 “God said, ‘Let there be light.’”  John 9:5 “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Max Lucado has been a pastor and author all his adult life. He is best known for his writing skills in presenting God the Father and Jesus Christ His only Son to us in a very personal and even tangible way.

In an excerpt from one of his books, ‘A Gentle Thunder’, Lucado helps us prepare for Christmas by linking the light He created at the beginning of time, space and matter with the Light that entered our world in the Bethlehem manger. The truth is – it was the manger that came first in God’s mind, in His eternal plan.

“Seated at the great desk, the Author opens the large book. It has no words because no words exist. No words exist because no words are needed. There are no ears to hear them, no eyes to read them. The Author is alone. He takes the great pen and begins to write. The Author assembles his words. There are three. On these three single words will pour a million thoughts and from which the story will suspend.

He takes His quill and spells the first: T-i-m-e. Time did not exist until He wrote it. He is timeless, but His story would be encased in time. The story would have a first rising of the sun, a first shifting of the sand. A beginning and an end. A final chapter. He knows it before He writes it. Time is a footspan on eternity’s trail.

Slowly, tenderly, the Author writes a second word. A name: A-d-a-m. As he writes, He sees him: Adam. Then He sees all the others. In 1,000 eras in 1,000 lands, the Author sees each Adam. Each child. Instantly and permanently loved. To each He appoints a place. No accidents or coincidences. Just design.

The Author makes a promise to these unborn: ‘In My image, I will make you. You will be like Me. You will laugh. You will create. You will never die. And you will write.’ They must. Each life is a book not to be read, but a story to be written. The Author starts each life story, but each life will write his or her own ending.

What a dangerous liberty. How much safer it would have been to finish the story for each Adam. To script every option. It would have been simpler and safer. But it would not be love. Love is only love if chosen.

So, the Author decides to give each child a pen. ‘Write carefully,’ He writes. Lovingly, deliberately, He writes a third word, already feeling the pain: I-m-m-a-n-u-e-l. The greatest Mind in the universe imagines time. The truest Judge granted Adam a choice. But it was love that imagined Immanuel. God with us.

The Author would enter His own story. The Word would become flesh. He, too, would be born. He, too, would be human. He, too, would have feet and hands, tears, and flesh. And most importantly, He too, would have a choice. Immanuel would start at the crossroads of life and death and make a choice.

The Author knows the weight of the decision. He writes the page of His own pain. The Author has a choice – He could stop. But how can Love not love? He chooses life, though it means death, with hope that His children will do the same. And so, the Author of Life completes the story. He drives the spike in the flesh and rolls the stone over the grave. Knowing the choice He will make, knowing the choice all Adams will make, He pens, ‘The End.’ then closes the book and proclaims the beginning. ‘Let there be light!’”

The Bible inspired Lucado’s thoughts about God’s plan in eternity – before creation – that reveal the Light that would one day come first appears in the manger: “…the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (Revelation 13:8); “Christ was foreordained before the foundation of the world but was revealed in these last times for you.” (1Peter 1:20). What does this mean in terms of God’s eternal plan for mankind?

“Before the foundation of the world” in the Bible means “in eternity.” God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit decide in eternity that the “Light of the world” (John 8:12, John 9:5) – Jesus Christ – Immanuel (God with us) – would enter into human history to be Their solution for the sinfulness of mankind.

Romans 3:25-26 says God revealed His plan from eternity for forgiving sinners: He combines His justice with His grace in the redemptive act of Christ ‘s death on the Cross: “God set forth Jesus Christ to be a propitiation by His blood, through faith… to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” “Set forth” is from eternity. “At the present time” is from creation. So, we start with Immanuel in the manger and for the next 3 years, living with us.

The first Light of the world was set in eternity and revealed in the manger before the light of creation. This is the wonder and mystery of the love of God that we as Christians focus in during this Christmas season.

“The Evidence of Faith’s Substance” _ Article #584