Throughout Advent, I have been using a devotional called O Come, Emmanuel, which includes hymns, carols, poems and stories inspired by Christmas.

Today's Bible reading is Philippians 2:5-11 and it is accompanied by Christina Rossetti's In the Bleak Midwinter. It has been fascinating to read about the origin of many of these carols and of the lives and faiths of their authors and composers, so another day I hope to share some of what I've learnt about them. However today I want to look a little at this carol.

Our God, heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain;
heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Rossetti reminds us that Christ's humility was revealed in that he was born in lowly conditions that others would think beneath them. It certainly wasn't a suitable birthplace for a king! On the day that the firstborn of all creation, the one who would sit on the throne over all heaven and earth, was born as man in a great plan ordained before the creation of the world, the heavenly angels would rejoice, but on earth only some local unlearned shepherds would come to worship him. Instead, the world would reject him and ultimately kill him.

He made himself nothing knowing all this, submitting himself to the will of the Father of his own free will, being willing to suffer a painful death and the separation from the Father to make atonement for us. How else can we respond but to give him our hearts?

Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:5-11