The Christmas Baby

I'll admit I don't quite have the 'christmas spirit' right now. But at 4am as I just couldn't sleep I began thinking of Christmas, real Christmas. Just thinking about Kian and his first Christmas. He won't really get it, he won't get the present thing or the bows and pretty paper. He won't understand Santa or even Jesus. But that's okay for now. What he'll see and feel is family, love, acceptance, tradition, familiarity, giving, and all that goes along with the presents and Santa and Nativity and all that is Christmas. Amid all the 'junk' he'll see Christmas spirit.

Which made me think of the first Christmas baby. A stable, with straw, donkeys, manure and probably even a few rats. Shepherds, who probably hadn't bathed in awhile, freezing on a hillside, barely sleeping, making sure their dirty, smelly sheep didn't run off or become dinner for some animal. A town, preoccupied with their census, and overflowing. In the midst of all that 'junk' a baby was born. That itself was pretty miraculous in those days, and in those conditions. But for the world, that town to drop everything and see this baby. Babies still bring hope to people, love, peace, they bridge gaps so wide. The circumstances that brought Jesus into the world were amazingly complicated, and yet so simple.

What is even more amazing is that baby died, a horrible death on a cross. To be a mother now and to know that Mary had her baby killed like that... I can't imagine. That baby died for us and that precious, perfect baby's blood cleansed us all and paved the way for us to have beautiful eternity.

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