Reflections on the Season

The Prince started walking last week. He's been taking one or two steps, but it seems as though he thinks "Wait, I don't do this," then drops to his knees and crawls. But, he took ten baby shuffle steps to hand the dog her ball. It was sort of a strange moment. Hubs and I looked at each other and squealed, then clapped, but it seemed like there should have been fanfare and crowd applause.

I can think of other recent moments that should have had extra fanfare. Maybe not the moment of The Prince's birth; it seems that there was plenty of noise then, but a parenthetical moment for Hubs and myself might have been nice. We didn't really get that until later in the day. But, certainly, when I went into labor, fanfare would have been great. The moment that we'd been waiting almost ten months for, that would start everything, had finally arrived. Graduations have fanfare, and weddings have fanfare-type music. How about the triumph of waking up and having the strength to get out of bed some mornings? Or thinking of something to make for dinner? Or having all the dishes done and all the laundry baskets empty (if only for a few moments)?

Mary didn't have fanfare in the manger. She did get a lot of strangers visiting (can't imagine having just given birth and entertaining such a wide variety of people), and she'd had angelic visions and such, but it seems like our Saviour should have had fanfare at His arrival. At least an epic soundtrack.

But that's all an integral part of the story, isn't it? How He humbled himself, and did without all the normal king-ley things. Having my own child makes so many things look different to me, not the least of which is the whole Christmas story. Seriously? Jesus became so helpless, dependent on others for everything? How many times did the Lord of All pee in his mom's face? Did she have trouble nursing him? Did he cry when a forbidden or dangerous item was taken away from him for his safety? Did he wake his mom up many times at night?

I'm proud to call Jesus my Lord, all the much more so for all these things. And when I think of the story, I have special fanfare going on in my head. Hallelujah, Lord Jesus.