During this season of Advent, we would like to share some short stories, scripture, poems and essays with you over the coming weeks regarding Jesus’s birth and the indescribable gift we have been blessed with should we chose to accept it. Today we are presenting “The Birth of Jesus” by Henry Van Dyke.

The birth of Jesus is the sunrise of the Bible. Towards this point the aspirations of the prophets and the poems of the psalmists were directed as the heads of flowers are turned toward the dawn. From this point a new day began to flow very silently over the world-a day of faith and freedom, a day of home and love. When we remember the high meaning that has come into human life and the clear light that has flooded softly down from the manger-cradle in Bethlehem of Judea, we do not wonder that mankind has learned to reckon history from the birthday of Jesus, and to date all events by the years before or after the Nativity of Christ.