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Dec 25, 2022 06:00am

Sweet Baby Jesus

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Sweet baby Jesus. For years, thinking about the baby in the manger never gave me all the feelings I thought it was supposed to give. I love Christmastime–the music, time with family, decorations, and food. I would even imagine myself in the story–the smell of hay and manure, the baby in a blanket, the lowing cattle (I have to google “lowing” every year). What is wrong with me? I would wonder. But I could never conjure up some emotion about the baby in the manger. I tried, but my understanding of Christmas and faith was resting on nostalgia.

And nostalgia is a weak foundation for faith.

I needed something more than warm fuzzies and emotional holidays. I stopped short and settled for shallow sentiments, when what I needed was a deeper knowing of who this baby was and what He did.

At the time of His birth, people had been living through 400 years of silence from God. He no longer spoke through prophets, no longer worked miracles. Year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation of nothing.

I wonder if you can relate.

And then a baby is born: “ He will be called Emmanuel, which means God with us.” After living through generations of silence–a baby. God with skin on, God incarnate, God in the flesh. No longer ‘God out there’ or ‘God who I’ve only heard about,’ but God with us, God among us. The God who had gone radio silent was now present in the most human, imperfect circumstances.

If this baby had only been born and lived here to show us what God is like, that would have been remarkable. But there’s more.
He called ordinary people to follow Him. He taught things that infuriated the religious but comforted the broken. He healed those society told Him to ignore.
His message to the self-righteous? Repent.
His message to the unrighteous? Grace.
Eventually we see the angry, religious, prideful send Him to the cross.
The Creator of the world, now crucified by His creation.
It looked as though His movement had become a sinking ship. This cross becomes the instrument of death, the death designed for a criminal, the death designed to make a spectacle of the guilty. But guilty He was not.
Imagine if you were one of His followers and after watching His grueling death, silence. Minutes and hours and days passed. Was He who he said?…Was I a fool to believe?…I’ve given up my life to follow Him, now what? They waited and they prayed.
And then an empty tomb, a knock on the door, a surprise meeting on the road…one by one He appears to His friends. This God who came to His creation as a baby grew and died and now was alive. Alive.
We later learn this death was on behalf of all who believe. Yes, it was guilt and crime and sin that caused Him to go to the cross, but it wasn’t His guilt and crime and sin. It was mine. It was yours. It was God’s will to crush Him because it was through this crushing that you and I escape death’s crushing weight. His death brings us life. Willing to step away from all the richness and glory of heaven, He condescended to a criminal’s death because of His great love for His people.

We celebrate the baby because He is Emmanuel, because He proved God’s love to us in a gruesome death, and because He displayed God’s power to us by rising from the dead.

His message to you and me? Believe.