From the very start, Christianity has challenged what the world calls impossibilities. "With God nothing shall be impossible," said the angel Gabriel to the astonished young Mary, after he told her she would bear a child, Jesus, who would rule forever on earth. And not only that, the child would be fathered by "the power of the Highest"—by God Himself. Luke 1:35, 37.
Jesus' life fulfilled the angel's amazing promise gloriously. Mary did indeed give birth to the promised child, though in the most unlikely of locations for the advent of the Prince of Peace—a Bethlehem stable. And although the event went virtually unnoticed by the surrounding townspeople, a host of worshipers quickly gathered around the newborn baby—shepherds from the nearby hillsides and three famous astronomers attracted from the Orient by a magnificent star that rose over the stable.
As he grew up, Jesus continued to push the bounds of accepted conventions and possibilities. At twelve, he astounded the temple authorities with his explanations of Scripture. And as an adult, he taught his countrymen and -women a whole new view of Hebrew theology—based on his simple, uncompromising love for God and humankind. Love that transcended ecclesiastical hierarchy and ethnic borders. Love that empowered Jesus to set aside mortal limitations and "impossibilities"—and heal people of grief and hopelessness, of dishonesty and adultery, of intransigent diseases.
