We made it. The tumultuous journey through Advent is over, and we’ve arrived at a destination beyond our wildest expectations. We have found the King of Kings, surrounded by the poor, in swaddling clothes. We can hardly conceive it, and need to summon our creative imaginations to just consider the scene.
See the manger. The face of Joseph — he seems younger than you’d remembered, younger than your father was when you discovered old photos in a tin box of him and your mother. Open the box, feel memory fill the room. See Mary, glowing with sweat, her covered head. Teenagers, who couldn’t fathom what would be in store for them. Mary would watch Jesus die, would witness his glorious resurrection. Jesus would lay with Joseph as Joseph would pass through the threshold, perhaps he’d be the same age Joseph was when he was born, but first, this perfect moment.
The shepherds — young boys hanging around, there’s nothing seemingly important to do, but they feel they can’t leave, they feel they need to be here. The smell of the stable, of afterbirth mixing with the smells of foods being prepared in the nearby inn. The first night may not have been silent after all, the murmur of the animals, the distant laughing of visitors and the grinding of mills, somewhere a dog was barking. Yet, our souls were silent, deeply silent. Imagining that type of silence reminded me what it was like to swim down to the bottom of the pool in Miami when I was a boy and look up. All the slow motion splashing through brilliant light. This beginning. First. Dawn.
This story is literally unbelievable. It is unbelievable that a God would love us so much that he would create us. That would have been enough. We would have built churches and exalted anyway, but to love us and desire to be one with us so much, he humbles himself and takes on our humanity. A desperate act for connection, to empathize, to touch. That would have been enough. If he came as a King, no one would blame him, we would have built Greek-like monuments to his greatness. We would have bowed before him as he strove passed us dressed in glittering white. We would have understood when he beat us and told us we were not worthy. This God-man would have created the cult of self and we would have obeyed. That would be believable. Instead, God, in his unfailing love for us, gives us this child.
See the child. Born to teenage immigrants, crying to keep warm, it takes unbelievable belief, but God loves us so much that he became like us, to serve us. This little child, raised and nurtured by his parents, mentored by his older cousin, gave everything to teach us how to serve and love one another.
Merry Christmas.
I’ll be seeing you,
Elliot