Quiet here. "My" computer is down, Christmas program tonight, and in the meantime we're busy baking and crafting Christmas. For this week's Enterprise...
At 3 ½ months old our little Eli
smiles and sees well enough to track me while I work. He’s almost doubled his weight, and when I
sit him on my lap he holds his head upright and looks from side to side. But in many ways he is still like the newborn
he was: helpless, able only to cry when he’s hungry or needs his diaper
changed. After man’s fall, we were worse
off than a newborn is – we were like dead men, who couldn’t even cry to God to
save us. “But God, who is rich in mercy,
for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when were dead in sins, hath
quickened us together with Christ…”
Ephesians 2:4-5.
And so our Savior was conceived
and born. The omnipresent Son of God,
the Word who made and upholds the galaxies, allowed Himself to be confined by a
body, to be wrapped a woman’s womb. Mary
experienced the sorrows of motherhood that every mother has known. For it was the woman who being deceived was
in transgression, and so the woman received this chastisement, “I will greatly
multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow you will bring forth children”
(I Timothy 2:14; Genesis 3:16). Mary
endured the arduous final stages of pregnancy as she and Joseph made the 100-mile
trek to Bethlehem. She experienced the
raw pain of contractions and giving birth on the floor of a cold, smelly
stable.
But there’s more to motherhood
than sorrow, isn’t there? Praise God, the
way of our chastisement is also the way in which we experience our salvation (I
Timothy 2:15). It’s there, in the throes
of noses that need wiping, bellies that need filling, diapers that need
changing, and hearts that need reaching that we’re brought face-to-face with
our helplessness, our sin, and the helplessness and the sins of our
children. With our shortcomings, and theirs. With our joint need for the Savior.
No doubt Mary was a woman who,
by God’s grace, met the difficulties of child-bearing and child-rearing with
the faith, love, holiness, and sobriety that the Word of God demands (I
Timothy2:16). Yet even though she received the epiphany regarding the child
that she would bear in faith, she must have wondered how God’s people would be
saved by the helpless infant she so carefully swaddled. In His mercy the Lord sent others to confirm her
faith. The visit of the shepherds, the
pilgrimage of the wise men, and the testimonies of Simeon and Anna served this
purpose. Mary’s life was not an easy
one. Those who denied her miraculous
conception labeled her a fornicator. No
doubt she was humbled countless times as she witnessed her sinless son. She watched Him enter public ministry only to
endure the ridicule of the leaders of the church. And she experienced the anguish of witnessing
the death of her child, compounded by the knowledge that her sin accounted for
His suffering. Simeon had foretold her
grief when Jesus was only eight days old: “Yea,” he said, “a sword shall pierce
through thy own soul also.”
But through her Son’s death, we
were born. Not of blood, nor of the will
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:12 -13). Our Lord labored on the cross, and we were
delivered from sin and made the spiritual sons and daughters of God. The adoption papers were signed; the high
price paid. And now we’re waiting. Longing for the day when we’ll be taken Home
to Father’s house. And so the
contractions continue. All of creation,
Paul wrote in Romans 8, works to bring forth His second coming. The little one who was laid in a manger will
soon appear as the mighty Lord of heaven and earth.
Do you know the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ? Though He was rich,
for your sake He became poor, that through His poverty you might become rich
and inherit all the glories of Father’s heavenly kingdom (2 Corinthians 8:9).
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