It should be of some significance to Christians that God’s message was not in “a raging whirlwind or a devouring fire” (Phillip Yancey quoted by Peter Wehner, NY Times December 24). His messenger on earth was an ordinary man who was born in difficult circumstances, even with a hint of scandal, in a manger, after his family could not be accommodated in the inn. He spent a part of his childhood as a refugee, as so many thousands of children and adults are forced to do today, grew up into a worker, a carpenter, and died in his 30s at a time when the lifespan could not have been much higher. Some who do not subscribe to the view that he was the son of God, described him as an itinerant preacher, undistinguished from many others at that time, whose story took on
