God Came to Earth as a Baby

From Cathy Ode, Director of Children's Ministries

God came to earth as a baby on that very first Christmas.

What does that mean to you?

When I was little, I didn't think much about Jesus. Pretty much the only time Jesus entered my consciousness was at Christmastime, when I'd see manger scenes large and small -- a big one oudoors in a New England town square, a small do-not-touch creche at a grandparent's house. If anyone had asked my child-self who Jesus was, I'd probably have said, "Well, he's this baby..."

As I grew, Jesus became a man to me but one frozen in ancient, irrelevant history. "What would Jesus do?" Well, what did I care?! We moved a lot because of my dad's job, and I went to lots of different churches. But I always felt like an outsider. I never got to know any of the other kids at Sunday School. And I certainly never felt like I knew Jesus. He was a symbol, a stranger. He was the mascot for a club I never quite fit into.

I began attending church on my own while I was in college. There happened to be a Lutheran church two doors down from a co-op where I lived sophomore year. It was pretty easy to roll out of bed and down the street a couple times a month. I wasn't thinking much about Jesus, but I was aware of a craving for something. Community maybe? A home away from home? An anchor for my crazy college life? In that church community I was fed and befriended, both literally and spiritually. And there was a dim awareness that somehow we were all distant relatives of Jesus, and that I belonged in their midst.

Pregnant with my first child one Advent a few years later, I began to know Jesus in a brand new way. Those stories -- of Mary traveling, young and afraid -- resonated strongly for me. I was newly (and shakily) married, in a new town with no family or friends to share the joy of impending birth. Mary's experience helped to make Jesus real for me, as a flesh and blood baby of all-too-human parents.

As a young mom of two, I became a youth group leader. I knew by now that Jesus wasn't a fiction or a fable. Although I didn't know Jesus well, I had a deep sense that he knew me. And that made an enormous difference in my life. I felt called to share this deep conviction with teens, a calling that scared me half to death! Adolescents can smell hypocrisy a mile away. I still didn't know how to reconcile my belief with my unbelief. But I'd received by then the gift of faith, or "the hope for things that are not seen but are true." (Hebrews 11:1)

Fast forward a couple of decades. I'm a bona fide "church lady" now: fifty years old, with gray hairs and a grown-ups office at St. John's. My relationship with Jesus has weathered some storms that sank other relationships.

And here's what Christmas means to me this year -- God came to earth as a baby to teach us our role in bringing about the reign of heaven on earth. A baby must be held, fed, clothed, protected, cherished above all else for at least one moment early in life. God lay there helpless in the straw. God waited to be picked up, snuggled close, and gazed at with adoring eyes. Had that not happened, the promise could have died there in the manger. But Joseph and Mary got it (with a little help from angels, shepherds, and kings, perhaps!). And we need to get it too. Omnipotent, all-powerful God can't do it alone. I am thankful for the wisdom of our childhoods, "Jesus is this baby..." Love comes to us fragile and in utter need of our care. O come let us adore him. And then let's pick him up and get to work.