Picture a Christmas

Close your eyes and bring your attention to your body. Whether you are sitting, standing, or laying down, make sure your body feels relaxed and supported. Relax the muscles in your face, jaw, neck, and shoulders.

Take a few deep breaths. As you breath in, imagine drawing peace, calm, humility, and openness into your body and mind. As you breath out, imagine expelling tension, negativity, pride, and stress from your body and mind.

As your breathing returns to normal, turn your thoughts and attention to the nativity story. As I review this story with you, allow your thoughts and the Spirit to guide your mind. Don’t worry about focusing on every statement or question I share.

Picture a young woman, roughly 2,000 years ago in the middle east, going about her day, perhaps thinking about her engagement to a young carpenter named Joseph, when suddenly an angel appears in front of her and calls her name, Mary . Picture her reaction as the angel tells her that she is “highly favored of the Lord.” Imagine an angel telling you that! Next, the angel breaks the incredible news that she’s going to have a baby boy who will be “called the Son of the Highest” and will “reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there would be no end.” (Luke 1:33.)  

Mary’s response? Initially she asks how this is possible. Then, when the angel explains that “with God, nothing shall be impossible,” Mary says, simply, “behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” (Luke 1:37-38.)

What do you think allowed Mary to accept the incredible news from the angel so quickly? 

Do you think she later sought personal revelation to further understand what the angel had told her? 

If an angel came to you and told you how your next year of life would unfold, how do you think you would react? How quickly would you accept your future? 

How fervently do you seek revelation after hearing modern day prophets speak today?

Although Mary quickly accepted the angel’s prophecy to her, her betrothed, Joseph, took a bit longer to come to terms with the situation. 

We aren’t told in the scriptures how Joseph came to find out that Mary was with child. We only learn that Joseph was a kind man and that he was, understandably, concerned. He did not want to make a public example of Mary, but he considered ending their engagement without spectacle and moving on with his life. As he was grappling with this decision, an angel appeared to him in a dream and assured him that Mary had not been unfaithful, and told him, “fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife.” (Matthew 1:20.) The angel instructed Joseph to call the baby “Jesus,” and prophesied that Jesus would save His people from their sins. 

Mary was told of her role as Christ’s mother by a heavenly messenger. Joseph found out about Mary’s pregnancy on his own, and perhaps Mary tried to explain, but only later was Joseph visited by a heavenly messenger bringing assurances and prophecies to calm his doubts and fears. Why do you think this was? Why not send an angel to break the news to Joseph from the beginning? 

How do you think Mary and Joseph’s relationship was affected by this order of events and by the way their marriage began?

How much do you think Mary and Joseph knew about the life and mission of the baby they were charged with bringing into the world and raising?”

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Now picture a society of people on the other side of the Earth. Five years before, a Lamanite named Samuel stood on a wall and prophesied that Christ, the Son of God, would be born on the earth. Throughout the past five years, this prophecy has brought hope and joy to many who believe in Christ and His redemptive mission. But others have been enraged by it. They don’t believe in Christ, and they don’t want anybody else to, either. 

It’s now about time that the prophecy should be fulfilled, or so some think. Has the time passed? The nonbelievers rejoice more and more with every passing day, taking pleasure in the fact that the believers’ joy and faith has been in vain. (3 Nephi 1:6.) Misery loves company, I suppose. 

But the believers “watch steadfastly” for the signs Samuel promised. (3 Nephi 1:8.) Some of them start to worry; others don’t let the unbelievers’ taunts get to them. But then things take a turn for the worse. The unbelievers pick a day. If Samuel’s prophecies don’t come to pass by that day, all the unbelievers will be put to death. 

Imagine how the believers felt, as the day crept closer and closer. How earnestly could you hold on to your testimony if you knew that tomorrow you could be put to death for your beliefs? How would you spend that last day and night?

One believer, Nephi, spends his day “crying mightily” to the Lord in prayer. And he gets an answer. What the people didn’t know, and what the Lord tells Nephi, is that the nonbelievers happened to pick the very day of the Savior’s birth. The signs Samuel the Lamanite prophesied about would occur the night before all the believers were to be put to death.

So as the sun slowly set that evening, and darkness never came, relief washed over the believers, who knew that the Light of the World was about to be born. Everyone in the land experienced profound astonishment. Hope and joy spread through the society, as many people became converted and believed in Jesus Christ. And with that hope and joy came peace.

We, like the Nephites, watch steadfastly for the signs we have been promised about the Savior’s return to earth. Although we face some persecution, things have not gotten to the level of the Nephites’ picking a day to exterminate believers. But what if they do? What if we are told that if Christ doesn’t come by February 23, 2041, all believers will be put to death, or will be stripped of legal rights, or will be put in prison, or exiled? What kind of trust would you need in the Lord to weather that storm? How do you think the believing Nephites developed and maintained that kind of trust? How can you do the same?”  

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 Picture Mary and Joseph again, now married. They have just finished a long journey by foot and by donkey. They are exhausted. Mary is “great with child” and begins to feel sharp pains. Is it labor? She tells Joseph they need to find a place to rest right away. He begins searching. But innkeeper after innkeeper turn them away. Nobody has rooms available. One innkeeper suggests they stay in his stable. It’s warm and private, at the very least. Mary is past the point of being picky. This baby is coming! 

She settles into the stable, surrounded by animals. And she brings her firstborn son into the world. 

If you have had children, picture the moment you met your first child: the joy, the anxiety, the miracle of it. Now imagine you are Mary, feeling all those same feelings, but also meeting God’s son—the child you know is going to be a savior and a ruler. A child that deserves the best of everything. How did Mary feel at that moment? 

After being tasked with carrying, delivering, and raising the Savior of the World, do you think she felt any guilt that His momentous entry into the world occurred in a dirty stable, surrounded by livestock? 

Or do you think she knew her child needed to, as D&C 88:6 teaches, descend “below all things,” so that he could “comprehend[] all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth”? 

Maybe she had learned at that point, through her already miraculous experiences, to trust in God. Surely, she had internalized the angel’s words that “with God nothing shall be impossible.” (Luke 1:37.) If Christ was supposed to be born somewhere else, He would have been.

What thoughts do you think ran through Mary’s head or Joseph’s head as they stared down at the tiny, wiggly, new baby? As they gently swaddled him in strips of cloth? As they lovingly, carefully, laid Him in a manger, inside a humble stable, in Bethlehem?”

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In the moments, days, and years after Christ’s birth, several people who were strangers to Joseph and Mary testified of and reverenced the infant Savior. We can picture the wise men, traveling from the east and following a new star, who worshiped the “young child” and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

We can picture Anna, a prophetess and widow who dedicated her life to the service of God in His holy temple. She gives thanks to God when she sees baby Jesus, and proceeds to speak “of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.” (Luke 2:38.)

We can picture Simeon, an elderly man in Jerusalem who had been told he would meet “the Lord’s Christ” before he died. He followed a prompting to visit the temple on the same day Mary and Joseph brought the baby Jesus to the temple “to do after the custom of the law.” (Luke 25-27.) Simeon recognized the baby and took “him up in his arms and blessed God.” 

We talk so much about Christ encircling us about with love, but imagine if you, like Simeon, had a chance to hold baby Jesus, and encircle Him with your love and gratitude. Simeon prophesied about the difficulties that faced not only Jesus, the baby in his arms, but also His mother, who would eventually stand near the cross and helplessly watch her child suffer and die for all of God’s children.

What do you think it meant to these witnesses to meet the baby Jesus and recognize Him? What did it mean to Joseph and Mary, to have strangers appear out of the blue and pay such high respects to their child?

And of course, we cannot leave out the first witnesses of Jesus’ birth. Picture shepherds, drowsily keeping watch over their sheep in the dark. One of them looks up and sees…an angel? He gets the others’ attention, and as they all look heavenward, the “glory of the Lord” shines all around them. 

They stare in awe and anticipation and, initially, terror, as the angel begins to speak. The angel says, “fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:9-10.) As the angel speaks, more angels appear, until the shepherds are surrounded by “a multitude of the heavenly host praising God.” 

We don’t know who these heavenly beings were. Maybe you were there. Maybe it was the souls who had come before–ancient prophets, believers, and covenant people of the Lord, thrilled to participate in the fulfillment of their own prophecies and hopes. 

Whoever they were, these heavenly hosts praised God, saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” Imagine the joyful sounds ringing through the air on an otherwise still, silent, and dark Bethlehem night. Picture the awe and wonder of the humble shepherds, watching this unfold above them. Picture the joy bursting in these angels’ hearts and shining on their faces as they delivered their message and urged the shepherds to go and see.