3.WHAT CHILD IS THIS?
Why lies He in such mean estate,
where ox and ass are feeding...
On first glimpse all we would see is a baby, wrapped in
swaddling clothes and perhaps think nothing of it. But
when we noticed that it was lying in a manger, a cow’s
feeding trough, surely we would take notice. What
possible reason could there be for a baby to be lying in
the place where the cattle’s food was usually placed?
Looking around we might see the mother and her
husband, bending over the baby to shelter it from the
cold of the night—for the young family are not at home
or even in a public house, but the inside of a crude cave
in the hillside which shepherds sometimes used as a
stable. That would explain the manger.
Yet even as the scene begins to make sense, a group
of shepherds suddenly enter and kneel down around
the manger as if in homage to the child—and not only
that, they exclaim that an angel has appeared to them
and announced that this baby is to be “a Savior who is
Christ the Lord.”
What if it were then made known to us that this baby
was not only a Savior, but the Son of God, the Creator
of the Universe come down from the Heavens and
taking the flesh and form of one of His lowly creatures?
And that by this Incarnation He would suffer and die
for His people that they might be saved from their sins?
What would we see if we looked upon the baby now?
Would it not send shivers down our spines to gaze upon
the fragile form of a newborn baby, shivering in the
cold and know that there before us lay the One who had
spoken the world into existence? And yet as a baby He
cannot say a word.
Would it not cause us to fall on our knees and tremble
to see that the One whose hands made the mountains
and oceans, the moon and the stars, was too small to
reach up and touch the heads of the cattle who towered
above Him like giants?
Would we not bow in adoration before the love of a
Creator who would come into His Creation to save it—
not as a mighty king and ruler, born in a palace to lead
conquering armies to force all men to submit to His
Divine Will, but as a tiny infant, born out in the wild
because there was no room for Him among the people
He would die for? And yet He still came, and He still
died, whether or not they would accept Him.
At His birth He was proclaimed as a Savior, but His
manner of saving was not one which any human mind
would have predicted. When He had grown up, He
suffered His passion and death to save us from our sins.
From then on, no one looking upon the wounds from
the whips and nails, or the crown of thorns on His head
could ever say that God had not experienced suffering.
Nor could one looking upon the cross say that God did
not know death. For He has died to show us that we are
worth dying for.
But the great hope which we celebrate at Christmas
was truly realized on Easter Sunday, when the One
who said, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who
believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live, and
whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”
(John 11: 25-26) conquered death itself and rose from
the grave.
4.THE JOY OF CHRISTMAS
Joy to the world
the Lord is come...
So it was that as I sung of this hope and love of God
to the residents of the nursing home that the thought
came to me that perhaps my Nana was joining in with
these songs before the face of the One who once lay in
a cattle’s feeding trough because there was no room for
him in the inn.
This is the hope that we should all carry with us. That
if we take up our cross and follow Him, we too may rise
from the dead and live forever. This is the hope which
we celebrate at Christmas, the gift God has given to us
of His very self. I think this is more than reason enough
to rejoice when December twenty-fifth comes around.
Don’t you?
Andrew graduated from High School with Seton in 2014.
He is the eldest of five children with a brother and three
sisters. Some of his interests include reading, (especially
Chesterton, Tolkien & C. S. Lewis), film making, bush
walking/camping and writing – some which may be found
on his blog;
Thoughts for the Journey
.
28
BAYLEY BULLETIN, DEC 2016-FEB 2017
