He Chose to Lie as an Infant in a Manger

Though heaven was his habitation and earth his footstool, he chose to lie as an infant in a manger, surrounded by horses and camels and mules.

Though he laid the foundations of the earth, and worlds without number had rolled into orbit at his word, he chose to come into mortality among the beasts of the field.

Though he had worn a kingly crown in the eternal courts on high, he chose to breathe as his first mortal breath the stench of a stable.

Though he would one day come forth - born then in glorious immortality - with all power in heaven and on earth, for now, as the helpless child of a peasant girl, he chose to begin the days of his probation as none of Adam's race had ever done before.

And there, even in such a birth, he was rejected by his people, symbolically at least, for none in the recesses and rooms of the inn had seen fit to make room for a weary woman, great with child, who needed above all at that hour the kind hands and skill of those who had attended her cousin Elisabeth in more fortuitous circumstances.

But with it all, a God had come into mortality, inheriting from his mother the power of mortality and from his Father the power of immortality. Soon the infinite and eternal atonement - sought and desired by the righteous for four thousand years - would be a living reality.  Soon all that had been hoped and promised and foreseen would come to pass. Is it any wonder that angelic choirs, even now, were awaiting the cue to sing forth great anthems of praise, some of which would be heard by shepherd ears on the nearby Judean hills!

- Excerpt from "The Mortal Messiah" by Bruce R. McConkie