A young woman gave birth to a baby boy on a cold December night – have you heard the story?
It was a shivering night, under a star-speckled sky.
It happened inside a drafty stable where a frightened teenager kept the animals up all night with the trials of labor and their most-alarming sights and sounds.
Yep, there is so much more to childbirth than we ever see in a nativity snow globe.

A fortnight later, the mother took the baby to the Temple where, a quirky old man blessed the child and predicted he would have a very hard life. Then he told the woman that a sword would pierce her soul as well.

A few years later her youngster wandered off in a strange city.
He went missing for several days, and was only found when, in her anguish, his mother chanced by the Temple to pray-
There she found him entertaining mysteries well beyond his years.

And as challenging as mothering a strong-willed, even a gifted child, must have been, this was not the end of it.
For this mother would undergo a parent’s worst horror, one that some of us have experienced, when a child departs this earth ahead of his parents.

The grief is unimaginable because the love, between a mother and a son is also unimaginable.

While we dads do our best, it’s hard to deny the enduring truth behind the old barroom saying, ‘Mommy’s baby, Daddy’s, maybe.’

Perhaps this is why the story of the Nativity finds its center in the love between a mother and an infant.
Ever notice who the closest porcelain parent in the crèche always seems to be?
Dad leans over adoringly-
But Mom gets on her knees, and down to his level.
Moms love in the face of contempt.
Moms love despite ingratitude.
Moms keep vigil despite rejection. (Frederica Matthews-Green)

It is this kind of love, taking fragile human flesh beneath that star speckled sky that the Lord of the universe uses as a jumping off point:
‘Yeah, I love you that much – and even more.’

For Christmas is the first chapter of the greatest love story the world has ever known.

The Christmas question, then, is what are we going to do with it?
Love given freely, unearned, undeserved, unwarranted and unjustified-
Even more than the love of a mother, so what will we do with this greatest gift of all?

Reading
The Great Divorce – CS Lewis
Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism – John Spong
Healing and Christianity – Morton Kelsey