There are a few things I like to collect: Children’s books, tea pots, table cloths, fabric that I am pretty sure I will make something with someday, and nativities. I have at least three dozen nativities. Not to worry. Some are miniatures and don’t take up much room. Okay. So they do sort of overtake the house, but only for a few weeks.
As a kid our family had a Christmas album sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford. My favorite song on that album was “Some Children See Him”. Of course children understand what we forget: That Jesus came as they themselves came.
When it comes to salvation Christians often scoot right past Christmas and jump to Good Friday and Easter. But a friend of mine insists that God coming with skin and bones and eyes and ears is an essential part of God’s salvation story. Likewise, that God came as a baby is critical to our understanding of who God is. There is no particular reason why God could not have shown up on a mountain top as an adult and started healing and teaching and dying and rising. Instead God chooses the hiddenness of the womb and the vulnerability of an infant in need of care. The power of babies is not in their ability to walk or run or unbutton their own clothes, but rather the power of the infant is making us turn from all else and place our sole attention on a single human life. Strangers pause, cousins leap for joy, and God comes with the surprising paradox of the mighty power of a helpless babe.
May the babe within you be held in attentive love.
