The Blessing of OrdinarySample

Kissing Baby Jesus

During her second Christmas season ever, my youngest daughter Addi developed an adorable habit. She fell in love with a picture book that told the Nativity story and became obsessed with flipping to the huge centerfold picture of baby Jesus in the manger. With two pudgy hands, she would lug the book around the house held open to that page, showing baby Jesus to family members or holding baby Jesus up to her face and giving him kisses. 

But then one day as she walked down the hall smooching on the Prince of Peace, my wife asked her to put down the book so that we could change her diaper. Angered that her holy affections were interrupted, Addi threw baby Jesus (and the Angels, the Shepherds, the donkey, the camel, and at least 2 of the wise individuals) down the hall in protest and began to scream and cry.

Addi’s response exposes an inner struggle many of us wrestle with…
Why won’t the universe just let us crack open the book of our daily lives right to the best parts and let us linger there, soaking it all in, kissing on baby Jesus? Why do dirty diapers have to get in the way?

But even the Christmas story itself shows us that life isn’t a never-ending succession of Kissing Jesus Highlights: During a time of government oppression, baby Jesus lays in a manger, surrounded by the stench of animals, watched over by two parents in a questioned marriage, in a hectic house that’s crammed with relatives. When the Word came in the flesh, He blessed ALL of human experience, not just the moments that make for good Christmas songs. Mary still had to wash dishes after birthing the King of Kings into the world. 

The Scottish preacher, Alexander Maclaren, has a helpful quote about this:
"If our likeness to God does not show itself in trifles, what is there left for it to show itself in?

For our lives are all made up of trifles. The great things come three or four of them in the seventy years; the little ones every time the clock ticks."

Most of the time the things “in the way” are actually the way and they are the place where The Way of Jesus is learned. Everyone must learn to walk the path of the everyday, even the heroes of our faith…