Musing #5: Baby

What is it about a baby?

What’s so magical?

The mystery of something that has grown in a hidden place.  It’s been felt, but not fully seen: only the grainy black and white ultra-sound image, or the eruption of a limb, pushing against its mother’s flesh...

And then the baby comes, and the world around it shifts; changes; makes room for this new life.  The baby comes and suddenly you have a new name: mummy, daddy, granny, grandad, aunty, great uncle, great grandma…

There’s never any shortage of love.  Love multiplies, grows: enfolds the baby.  The family reconstructs itself around this new life, and the wider community respond.  People, who were strangers until now, want to help, to support, to share in this wonderful miracle.  Because every birth is a miracle; the beginning of a new life; a new expression of God.

The baby is mesmerising: those tiny feet and hands; the peacefulness of sleep; the heart-rending cry.  A being so small. So vulnerable. So dependent – it catches the hearts of all around.

When the parents look back they can’t imagine what life was like before – how did they fill their time? What did they do?

What’s so magical about a baby?  They remind us of where we come from; of what we have lost; of the on-going circle of life.

When a baby arrives, love is born.

   

                 So, what is it about this baby: the Christ -child, Love incarnate?

What’s so magical?

The mystery of Love can be hidden – seen only in a mirror dimly.  The muffled movements not fully understood.

But, when Love is born, the world around shifts; changes; makes room.  And you are given a new name: beloved, daughter, son, child of Love.

And there’s no shortage of love.  Love multiplies: grows: enfolds itself.  Love draws us together as family and opens us up to the stranger, the outcast, the persecuted.  They embrace, and are embraced by, Love.  

Love is a miracle: the beginning of new life: a new expression of God.

What’s so magical about this baby, born into poverty?  

So vulnerable; so small; so dependent.

He reminds us of where we come from, of what we have lost, of the on-going circle of life.

God came as a baby because that’s where Love is born.