Today we know a great deal about the workings of the universe. The men who wrote the biblical stories, and the people who believed them, lived in a pre-scientific world where very little was understood about the immense mystery of the cosmos. And the more modern science discovers about how the universe was formed, the more impossible it is for many people to believe the simple message of triumph over death and evil that the Christian story suggests. There still remains something very compelling about this story, even for those who regard it as just a pretty fiction. It is, after all, part of the cycle of western community life, and the rituals that surround it may say something more profound than a literal belief in the story itself.
Every birth is in some way a miracle, albeit the most common of all.
Every birth, by demonstrating the subconscious determination of the human race to survive, is an act of faith and hope. And every birth, no matter how insignificant it may be, is an occasion of love. Call love what you will - a primitive survival urge, sentimental conditioning, or the greatest virtue of all. We all have the capacity for it, and the birth of a child allows us to feel it once again, no matter how dark the world may be. Jesus of Nazareth may have been a crazy dreamer, a great ethicist or, if you like, the son of God.