“We find it remarkable that the very Son of God, the great Jehovah of old, should be born into this mortal world in the humblest of circumstances. An inn would have been lowly enough, but it was not even an inn. Rather it was a stable, and the babe was laid on the hay of a manger where common animals fed. Even so, the greater condescension is that Jesus should have submitted to mortality at all, even if He were to be born in the best and most elegant of circumstances. With Paul, we marvel at ‘God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh’ [Romans 8:3]—that He should have become a baby; that He should have been a child and then a man, suffering ‘temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue’ [Mosiah 3:7] and even death.
“How is it that He who ruled on high in the heavens, the very Creator of the earth, should consent to be born ‘after the manner of the flesh’ (1 Nephi 11:18) and walk upon His footstool (see 1 Nephi 17:39) in poverty, despised and abused and, in the end, be crucified?” (“The Condescension of God and of Man” [First Presidency’s Christmas devotional, Dec. 7, 2014], lds.org/broadcasts).
“It is not wise to continually talk of unusual spiritual experiences. They are to be guarded with care and shared only when the Spirit itself prompts you to use them to the blessing of others. …
“I heard President Marion G. Romney once counsel mission presidents and their wives … , ‘I found out that if I talked too lightly of sacred things, thereafter the Lord would not trust me.’
“We are, I believe, to keep these things and ponder them in our hearts, as Luke said Mary did of the supernal events that surrounded the birth of Jesus” (“The Candle of the Lord,” Ensign, Jan. 1983, 53).
“When still a boy He had all the intelligence necessary to enable Him to rule and govern the kingdom of the Jews, and could reason with the wisest and most profound doctors of law and divinity, and make their theories and practice to appear like folly compared with the wisdom He possessed; but He was a boy only, and lacked physical strength even to defend His own person; and was subject to cold, to hunger and to death” (History of the Church, 6:608).