Thank you my family for coming together. You bring me hope in what can sometimes be a very hopeless kind of world. Know that you are loved beyond imagination. We live in a world where hope is receding and where hope is desperately sought after and needed.
It was into a world where people weep and cry…into a world where people are hurting and broken and mourn that there was the cry of a newborn…baby
It was the cry that every mother long’s to hear. That first gasp of fresh air, the lungs functioning and the finding of a voice…
It was the cry of a fragile little baby breaking upon history’s scene.
Quickly water which has been prepared and kept warm is washed over his entire body. Strips of torn and tattered cloth are wrapped around his tiny extremity to hold him firmly in place.
He is nuzzled close for warmth and for nourishment, if he will eat.
Does the wonder of such an event – still amaze you…or have you gone through so many Christmases that you have become hardened and deadened to the mystery of new life?
It is a miraculous sight to behold…a holy moment, if you will.
In the fragility of a tiny baby crying at his mother’s breast, where livestock nervously move about and a weary peasant man leans against the wall, wondering just what in the heck he should do next. How will he care for his family? How will he provide?
And yet, somehow, the night is hopeful…the hope of the entire world has been born. This is Christmas.
But the hope of the world comes unnoticed to many. The world is oblivious and rightfully so. Babies are born all the time, especially to peasants – who can least afford to take care of them. The setting is almost always crude and to be expected.
You would think that someone would explain to them how to keep “that” from “happening” until they have some financial stability. But no one does. No one says a word. No one recognizes “that hope” has been born.
The couple in the stable – have some kind of a foggy idea about something… Words of revelation have been given to them. Promises, dreams and visions have preceded this event. This child is to be a gift to all humanity, a rescuer, a savior – a hope for the hopeless.
But what that means…in this moment of time, is yet to be seen…for it is Christmas.
There is no one to notice this birth. No king, priest, religious leader or census official is yet aware.
Unscrupulous, filthy shepherds are the first to get wind of it as the night sky is illuminated with a bright light and the darkness split in two.
But they too, are nobodies, unimportant, unnamed and unreasonable witnesses. Who would they tell? The Sheep? And so, it is Christmas…
For the brokenness of our world, for the brokenness of individuals – a baby cried.
For those who longed to be rescued, for those looking for a savior, for those wanting to be delivered – a baby cried.
Matthew captured the essence of it all…when he wrote — the people living in darkness…the people without hope, the people living in a hopeless kind of world…have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death – a light has dawned…a baby has cried. Hope has arisen! There is hope!
God did not send Jesus into a “story book world” – where everything ends happily ever after. Instead this little one is sent into a world with Roman centurions, heartache and hardship, grief and pain, sickness and hunger, filled with poor people – who birth their babies in stables…as make-shift ER’s.
Is it any wonder “this baby” cries? Is it any wonder “all babies cry?”
We know that the skeptic, the cynic, the naysayers and pessimists, the hard hearted and the despairing, the defeatists and the negativists will rule the day, if we allow them. For them, life is a gamble, it is random – it is a crap-shoot.
It was a dark night that represented a cold, hard, broken, sometimes lonely, sometimes very cruel world. The kind of world that you and I live…
It was into that world – where people weep and are hurting and are broken – there came a cry.
It doesn’t matter who heard it – or who didn’t hear it – it was a cry. The cry of a newborn.
And with its cry – there came hope. And that hope, was the hope of the whole world.
And it was Christmas.