Amid the tinsel and lights of the Christmas season, you may find Nativity displays on fireplace mantels, store shelves, and front lawns. Those displays remind us of Jesus as an infant, “wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.” Many Christians think of this moment as the beginning of our Savior’s earthly presence as both God and man. But like every baby before and after Him, Jesus’s life on Earth in the flesh actually began months before birth.
The angel Gabriel explained how Jesus’s earthly life would begin when He told Mary she would miraculously conceive “the Son of God” while
