The Incarnation has always been a story of wonder, mystery, amazement to me. I've tried to imagine what it must have been like for all the people involved. The shepherds, Joseph, Mary's family, even Elizabeth. This year I find myself thinking more about Mary and wondering about all the details between the lines of the story in Luke that is so familiar and precious to me. And I find myself looking into the sleeping face of my newborn son and crying as I think of the Creator of the universe coming as a tiny, blood-covered infant, so suddenly dependent on his human parents for survival. His head lopsided from his journey through the birth canal. Every sense shocked at this entrance into air and humanity. His fists clenched, his lungs screaming as they learn to breathe. The King of Kings, wrapped in cloths, suckling at the breast of a young woman, sustained by her body as the milk flows into his stomach. He sighs and is full. She places him in the feeding trough, swaddled tightly, arms and legs bound. The Son of God, unable to hold up his head, his only means of communication a newborn's wailing. What a plunge, what a degradation. What foolishness! What a way to redeem a wayward, whoring people to Himself. My heart yearns to understand this God more. So I hold my baby so close, and I whisper to him of a King who came wrapped in flesh. I kiss my soft-skinned boy and think of another boy who came screaming into the world and was held in trembling hands, and was kissed by a woman as fumbling and frail as me. He chose our frailty. He stooped and took on the mantle of humanity. Bloody, gasping, time-locked humanity. The Word made flesh. God with us.
"Haste, haste, to bring him laud
The babe, the son of Mary."
