What I respond to the most in the Christian story of Christmas is the birth story itself. That everyone would drop what they were doing (tending their flocks and all that) and rush to acknowledge this baby and recognize the hope that he brought to the world.
Each and every child is a miracle in their own way, and a birth is so incredibly powerful to witness. The possibilities for their life are open, but they also show us that the possibilities for our lives are still open too. Children can bring out the best in us all, calling us to be the kind of adults that they deserve. When we truly open our hearts to the power of their presence in this world, we open ourselves to the calling to build a better world for them and to grow ourselves into the kind of person we would have wanted to love us when we were children.
Reading #616 from Singing the Living Tradition
For so the children come, and so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they come, born of the seed of man and woman.
No angels herald their beginnings. No prophets predict their future courses.
No wisemen see a star to show where to find the babe that will save humankind.
Yet each night a child is born is a holy night,
Fathers and mothers - sitting beside their children's cribs, feel the glory in the sight of a new life beginning.
They ask, "Where and how will this new life end?" "Or will it ever end?"
Each night a child is born is a holy night -
A time for singing.
A time for wondering.
A time for worshipping.
Sophia Lyon Fahs
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