christmas thoughts...

I was thinking today on Jesus' birth... Born in a stable-cave, wrapped in swaddling clothes to ward off the night chill from the first response of baby skin to midnight air...sanitation was out the door as the steamy breath of animals and the tender touch of very young parents brought the first sense of being alive in this world to this babe.

It may be a little nuts to think about it just this way...but if two teenagers today delivered a baby in a barn in the middle of the night and kept it in a feeding trough...they would soon be up on charges of child neglect, and who knows what else. But that is just what happened then...on purpose by God's great care for you and me.

Then this God/man, this man/child, grew up to once more be wrapped in a type of swaddling cloth as he was laid in an empty tomb on a cold slab of hewn stone. The only breath here was most likely from the angels (do angels breathe?...we know they can sing and blow trumpets). He arrived on earth into the cold and muddled and treacherous world...and he departed in the cold of a tomb, the result of chaos that still exists. What an arrival...what a send off...for the Son of God. (Ever wonder if Jesus was enough of a neat-nik that he folded up His own grave wrappings...or did one of the angels do it for Him?)

To those who don't know the Gospel story...and even with some who do...God's incarnation...revelations...and resurrection are confounding tales, which, I happen to believe are true. What an arrival. What a departure, encore and final glimpse of Jesus. Paradox? Yes. But without these confounding facts we would have no hope for that tomorrow about which He declared He would come again for each one who believes He IS the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world...including mine...and yours. That should boggle the mind in the chaos and occassional oasis and joys of life