And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. She gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.

Luke 2:6-7

I expect you may have heard your pastor complain about the line in “Away in a Manger” that states, “The little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” I admit that I have been one of those pastors. Though I did not ban this song from Irvine Presbyterian Church, where I pastored for sixteen years, I did sometimes remind my congregation that the baby Jesus was a real, flesh-and-blood baby, and therefore he surely cried in his first day of life because that’s what real, flesh-and-blood babies do. The true miracle of Christmas is the Incarnation of the Word of God. In Jesus, God became fully human, even as Jesus was also fully divine. This is a marvelous, mysterious miracle. It means that, among other things, Jesus fully participated in the human experience, including crying and all the other things babies do.

Yet, something happened in my life that made me wonder if the baby Jesus did indeed receive some special help to keep him from crying in the manger.

My daughter, Kara, was born in November 1994. Though she was a delightful baby most of the time, in her first weeks she did have a habit of crying uncontrollably in the early evening. This was not a major problem for my wife and me, except that Irvine Presbyterian Church wanted us to play the holy family in the Christmas Eve children’s pageant. The timing was perfectly wrong. We would be in front of a sanctuary full of people at precisely the time Kara would be bawling her head off. Not exactly conducive to a celebrative Christmas Eve service! How would we be able to sing “Silent Night” with “the baby Jesus” howling away?

Nevertheless, my wife, Linda, and I agreed to give it a try. We formulated various contingency plans, fully expecting Kara to cry. Yet, when it was time for us to make our grand entrance, Kara was wide awake but strangely silent. We stood before the congregation for many minutes, ready to comfort Kara when the inevitable crying began or even to surreptitiously remove her from the sanctuary. But Kara rested in Linda’s arms, happy, peaceful, and miraculously quiet. In fact, she never once made a single peep while she played her crucial role as the baby Jesus. And, if you can believe it, that was the end of her evening crying episodes. She never again had them.

Now I can imagine young parents, upon hearing this story, rushing to try and get their infants to play the role of baby Jesus in their church pageant. Unfortunately, however, I don’t think there’s anything magic about what happened with Kara, so I wouldn’t recommend this strategy. I’ve sometimes wondered if God simply wanted to play a gracious trick on me, the one who had so often complained about the “no crying he makes” line in a beloved carol. It’s as if God was saying to me: “See, I can do whatever I want! And, yes, I can even help a little baby to stop crying … your baby!” I’m not sure about this, of course, but I do wonder.

What I do know for sure is that God really became human in Jesus. The little baby, who may or may not have cried on the night of his birth, was the Word of God Incarnate. As a real human being, he felt the joys and sorrows, the delights and pains of human life and work. More importantly, because he was fully human, Jesus was able to take our sin upon himself, thus breaking the power of death and offering true life in him. When we put our faith in Jesus as our Savior, then the real miracle of Christmas takes place in us.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER REFLECTION: What difference does it make to you that Jesus was truly and fully human, even as he was truly and fully God? How does the humanity of Jesus help you to trust him? Is your heart ready to make room for Jesus this Christmas?

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, this story is so familiar. Yet each time I read and reflect upon it, I am blown away by the fact of your birth. How amazing that the very Word of God became human! And how wonderful that you were born, not into comfort and luxury, but rather into simplicity and poverty. You took on real human existence so that you might know us and so that we might know God through you. You became one of us so that you might take our sin and so that we might receive the life that you alone can give. What a blessing!

Dear Lord, in the midst of festivities and feasting, in the rush of travel and the fellowship of family and friends, may my heart be open to you this Christmas.

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!

Amen!

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Advent Works

If work is God’s gift to us and an invitation to participate with him in the work of redemption and restoration, it makes sense that we would experience grace and also be the conduits of grace in our work and workplaces. We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ to do good work. So, in this season of gift giving and celebrating the gift of grace through Jesus, join us as we consider how to find grace in our work this Advent, in the series, Advent Works.

Featured image by Cindee Snider Re. Used with Permission. Source via Flickr.