There were moments in the Galilean countryside that have been forgotten. I remembered some of them this week, though I had never been told about them by any wise men, and had never read about them in any book. Even the Scriptures are silent about these moments. But they are moments that I know to be true. They are history. They are a part of the tradition about Jesus that has come down to us, but only this past week had I recalled this tradition and knew it to be authentic.
At three o'clock in the morning one night this week, my wife and I attempted to coddle our newborn child who cried and would not sleep. I watched as my wife tenderly spoke to him, held him to her breast, and tried everything she could to keep her own eyes from closing from fatigue. I changed his dirty diaper, helped to burp him, and wrapped him in a blanket to keep him warm. When we finally were able to calm him, we laid him in his bassinet and turned off the light. That was when the fear that every new parent knows filled the room and there in the dark neither of us could sleep, despite our lack of it and need for it. Worry over the infant, startled at every gurgling sound, holding our breath if only to be able to hear his, the night progressed much slower than before. And though the worry is as deep as our souls, the joy ran deeper. It is the joy of seeing his tiny little face and his perfect feet and the smell of his newborn head. We cannot help even in these restless moments from feeling this ever abiding joy at the blessing that sleeps in the bassinet by our bed.
Mary and Joseph surely knew such moments, though the bassinet may have been a cattle trough, and their own bed the earth, and those nights perhaps more restless than ours. The Gospel writers make no mention of such restless nights, but they are a truth about Christianity that should not be forgotten. Even when I think I have heard all there is to hear about the faith, a night like this passes and I remember that as much as the story of Bethlehem is a divine story it is also a very human story filled with the stuff of ordinary life. Ordinary life is exactly what Jesus entered into. So ordinary, in fact, that God placed himself at the mercy of young parents. The infant laying next to Mary and Joseph was helpless and fragile. If neglected in the manger, Jesus was as near death there as he was hanging on the cross after being neglected by the people. Jesus cried, and fed at Mary's breast, and was burped, and soiled his ancient diapers, and fussed, and searched for comfort in the arms of Mary. Joseph sat up pondering the child's very presence, revisiting his dreams over and over, fearing for the baby's life, and trying to find ways to protect the family. They too lay restless in Bethlehem, holding their very breath in order to be sure that God had not by chance stopped breathing beside them. This is a forgotten moment in Christianity. It is what makes Christianity unique. God is at the mercy of young parents who hardly know how to comfort a crying infant.
It helps to pause and remember the nights upon the Galilean countryside, when the stars shone bright overhead, and the night was deep, and the sounds of lone cattle bells and shepherds moving through the night gave way to the sounds of a fussy baby. What a joyous sound it was! It was the cry of God.
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