The Christmas story is the greatest story ever told. It has all the elements; a difficult journey, a young couple left out in the cold, a baby delivered in the crudest of circumstances, a miraculous choir of angels invading a dark and lonely hillside, a new star spotted and followed by foreign astronomers.
But there is nothing more profound or impossible to wrap one’s mind around than the Story behind the story: that God the source of all things would choose to limit His limitless essence to a single cell to come all the way to where we are—to become one of us—so that we could come to Him and not be afraid.
That story strains human comprehension and defies the boundaries of human logic. Yet, if it is true, it changes everything we could think about the deity, about what is actually power, and about all the goals we ever could make for ourselves as human beings. Theology, the study of God, is left speechless at such a profound claim. Yet, for well over two thousand years, there have been no end to the books and sermons about this deeper story. We will never be done with connecting the dots of every detail of this story from creation to this very day we are living. Nothing is incidental or accidental. Every “simple” detail is an eternal metaphor. This baby began in a rough-sawn wooden manger and ended nailed to a rough-sawn wooden cross. This helpless infant started his life wrapped in long bands of simple cloth to swaddle him and ended unwrapping his own burial clothes, folding them neatly, and walking out of his own tomb. Every detail in this story matters.
Yet, I hear some say, “Of course, we love Christmas! It is the story of a baby that doesn’t demand anything from us. We love the helpless-little-baby story.”
I can’t help but think that such comments must come from someone who never had a baby. Babies demand a total commitment from the start. There is no backing out. There is no letting up. A baby silently demands our all, right from the beginning.
Any mother knows a baby is a 24/7 responsibility. A baby consumes her energies, her attention, her engagement and her sleep. Without a word, without a job description, without a recess or a vacation, a baby demands our all. And there is no ending to this commitment, no moment when a parent can say, “Okay, this child is finished; he’s on his own.” No, a mother is always a mother. Every hurt, every rejection, every set-back this child endures tears at her very heart.
No wonder wise old Simeon said to Mary, “... and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.” Did his prediction come to her mind as she held the bled-out, dehydrated body of her son when the soldiers took him down from the cross?
Even as a grown man, this baby never forced anyone to serve him. He simply invited them to “leave their nets and follow him.” And still today it is the reality of Immanuel, God with us, that constrains us like a baby does its mother to commit to something that will change everything. It is the Love that will not let us go.
