The Christmas Story became earthly-real to me the year I gave birth to my first child, a son. By Christmas he was only two months old and neither of us knew what we were doing yet. But I understood what it is to grow a child in your own body, and how you know him after nine months in a way without words, and how your life is intertwined with his in ways you barely understand yet.
I thought about Mary traveling in her ninth month, knew the heaviness of her body and the discomforts of her burden, but any mother would bear those willingly for the sake of the little one to come. The delivery of a child in the stable became startling fact, and the making do with little in the cold rough night felt the ache of a mother’s heart to provide for her child. Was she hungry? Was she tired? Did she wonder if she would survive the delivery, alone in a cave? Shepherds, animals, straw, the night-time pastures, the crowded streets of the rural village– all lifted right out of the gilt-edged storybook and into this created world of dirt where it could be touched and smelled and remembered by a mother’s heart.
And in the night, when I was awakened yet again by the cries of a newborn, in the dim light of the nursery we would rock, and I would look at the tiny face and think of the Savior who came like this: so small and weakly dependent on someone to care for every need, to love Him. And I understood how Mary’s heart poured out to her baby as only a mother’s can, and how those tiny fingers entwined with hers day after day. A child, innocent and dependent, who would carry His mother’s heart and her sin to the cross someday– something no mother should have to face, and yet earthly grim and unflinchingly real. A Child dependent but so desperately needed here: innocence in exchange for our guilt, grace poured out from heaven for our wrenching pain and chaos. As the prophet foretold hundreds of years before, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful…Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)
This is the miracle of Christmas, new again every year in its mystery and wonder, that God came down a Child. That the Eternal entered into the flow of time to be with us from the beginning of life to the end. That the omnipotent God became a fragile and needy newborn. How can a mother’s heart help but worship at Christmas-time, when she sees her own children and thinks of the Christ-child? How can a mother’s heart help but make sure there is room for Him in her home, and call her own children around the manger to see the Child that is born for us?
“The God who needs nothing, came needy. The God who came to give us mercy, was at our mercy. And He who entered into our world, He lets us say it in a thousand ways– that there is no room at the inn.” Ann VosKamp
“Who, oh Lord, could save themselves,
Their own soul could heal?
Our shame was deeper than the sea;
Your grace is deeper still.
You alone can rescue, You alone can save,
You alone can lift us from the grave;
You came down to find us, led us out of death–
To You alone belongs the highest praise.” Matt Redman