Peace on Earth: A 5-Day Advent DevotionalSýnishorn

Today, we’re reading Luke 2:8-20. This is an especially familiar passage around Christmas time, but don’t let that stop you from thinking about what it says.

Let’s focus on what the angels said as they praised God in the night sky. God’s glory is magnificent and manifold—the angels could have sung about a hundred different attributes of God. So in this divine birth announcement, what are they choosing to focus on?

Suspended in midair, the angels first focus upward, where God is reigning high above the earth: “Glory to God in the highest heaven.” The next line, “And peace on earth to the people He favors,” brings us down the fields where the shepherds stand.

There is a huge distance between “highest heaven” and “earth”—but it is a distance that Jesus had bridged that night, stepping down from Heaven to be born as a human baby.

Why? To bring “peace on earth.”

Jesus is God, eternal and all-knowing and all-powerful and all-present. But at Christmas, Jesus was born as a human baby. He became fully human and fully God, because only as both human and God could he be the perfect mediator to bridge the divide between heaven and earth and bring peace between God and humanity.