He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village, where He worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a home. He didn’t go to college. He never visited a big city. He never traveled more than two hundred miles from the place where He was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself.

He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.

While He was dying, His executioners gambled for His garments, the only property He had on earth. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today He is the central figure of the human race.

All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one solitary life. – Anonymous

These few paragraphs have been repeated for many years and the author is unknown. I share them with you because they beautifully capture the simplicity and majesty of Christ.

There’s an interesting story told of an impoverished young girl who stared in a store window at a beautiful ceramic nativity scene. She looked at her own tattered clothing and thought of the dirty hovel in which she lived. In comparing her own life to the sanitized version of the baby Jesus, the young girl concluded that the Christ-child could not possibly identify with her.

We have cleaned up the story of Christ to make it more palatable to our modern sensibilities. But Christ’s coming to earth wasn’t clean. He was born to the poorest of families in the most deplorable of dirty places. God chose to send His Son into such filthy conditions to make a statement.

The message to the little girl looking in the window is the same to you and me. Salvation offered by Jesus Christ is available to all.

As we gather with our families this Christmas, we are celebrating the solitary life of the Son of God who came to “save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).

The battle between science and religion rages on. Two books by atheistic scientists are currently on the New York Times best seller list, “The God Delusion” by Oxford professor Richard Dawkins and “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris.

Both books criticize the majority of us who believe in God and claim that atheism is the only reasonable position. The impetus for this new wave of anti-God books is the rising popularity of Intelligent Design.

Intelligent Design is a catch phrase title given to a rapidly growing body of scientific study that claims the universe is so complex it must have been designed by a Higher Being. Though Intelligent Design steadfastly refuses to identify this Being as the God of the Bible, atheists are nonetheless threatened and are fighting back.

TIME Magazine put it on the cover of the November 13, 2006 issue. TIME convened a debate between Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins. Collins is Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. He headed a team of 2,400 scientists who succeeded in mapping the biochemical letters of our genetic blueprint, arguably the most significant scientific accomplishment of the past few decades. Collins is a Christian who maintains that science does not have to exclude God in its understanding of the universe.

Though the introduction to the article is slanted against faith, TIME deserves credit for bringing together two eminently qualified scientists for the debate. From the outset, both men agreed that religion and science cannot exist in totally separate realms. Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould had popularized the belief that religion and science can coexist because they occupy separate airtight boxes.

Collins called it an “artificial wall between the two worldviews that does not exist in my life.” Dawkins added that the idea was “purely a political ploy to win middle-of-the-road religious people to the scientific camp.”

It’s refreshing to me to see the destructive philosophy of separate spheres of life begin to be dismantled. Many Christians and non-Christians attempt to live their lives in neat little categories. This artificial separation then provides a compartmentalizing of life that results in hypocrisy.

Our lives at work, our lives at church, and our lives in the classroom are all parts of the reality of our existence. Science is not separate from faith any more than Saturday night at the bar is a separate reality from Sunday morning singing in the choir.

I use these particular examples because many have mistakenly thought that evolutionary teaching in the classroom has little or no effect upon how the average person lives. Abraham Lincoln correctly observed that the philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next generation.

I encourage you to read the entire debate between Dr. Dawkins and Dr. Collins. It can be found on the web at www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1555132,00.html.

The most interesting part to me was the discussion about the unknown questions of the universe. Dawkins admitted “There could be something incredibly grand and incomprehensible and beyond our present understanding.”

“That’s God,” Collins replied.

The recent snow storm forced many of us to slow down. Forced is the correct word for many in today’s fast paced society; we are busy, busy, busy.

This busy-ness frequently results in stress because we just can’t do everything we believe needs to be done. Stress seems to be a modern invention. The word is rarely found in writings from the past.

While I do not believe stress is a modern invention, I do believe it’s much more prevalent today because of our life styles in 21st century America . Stop and think a moment about life just 100 years ago. Most people did not have cars, electricity or telephones. Most Americans (about 80%) lived in rural areas and farmed or ranched for a living.

There were no radios, televisions, video games or internet. There were no organized sports leagues for children. There were very few club meetings, golf courses, dance recitals or quick trips to the store.

Our modern technological advances have greatly improved our quality of life. Most of us rarely have to suffer from extreme cold, extreme heat or hunger. It’s been so long since we were bored we’ve almost forgotten the meaning of the word.

Before technology allowed us to tame nature, snow storms brought everything to a complete halt. But today we have four-wheel drive vehicles and snow plows and large highway budgets all designed to keep everything moving.

Before technology allowed us to tame the dark, most everything slowed stopped when the sun went down. There were no headlights on great grandma’s buckboard.

In addition to technological advances, our society has steadily moved away from its Biblical roots. The Bible taught our ancestors to honor the Sabbath day. My grandfathers didn’t work on Sunday. Even those who did not worship God in church stopped and rested on Sunday.

Our Creator created us to live in seasons and rhythms. The Old Testament mandated five feasts for God’s people. They varied in length from three to ten days and everyone was required to stop working, rest, eat, visit with friends and worship God. In essence, they were holidays and vacations mandated by God.

But today our technology and our profit driven society has helped us to keep going when it’s dark. We can keep going when the weather is bad. We don’t have to stop for the Sabbath or the summer heat or any other reason but sheer exhaustion and mental breakdown. And when we refuse to slow down or rest, we have drugs to keep us going and make us feel better about our out-of-balance life.

We all appreciate technology, and we should. But we should not be a slave to it.

The answer to stress is to look to the Creator. God told us to take time to rest. He told us to take time pray and be with our families.

This Christmas season, why not set aside time to rest. Say “no” to some of the extraneous activities and “yes” to family, worship and God.