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What a "Christmas Baby" means to me.

Published 24 January 2009 by matthew | | E-mail this post

There's something gracious about Caroline being born on Christmas. To be honest, sharing your birthday with the day that celebrates the birth of Christ is a pretty big shadow to subsist. Still, to receive the birth of your daughter and then to celebrate her entrance into your life on the same iconic day which reminds us of God's incarnation, Grace applied in person - infinite God in finite infant flesh - carries an association quite wondrous.

Christ's birth is not the beginning of things - it is merely the marked application of God's eternal plan. Long before Divinity became human - before there was human - God spoke to action both creation and redemption. The birth of Christ represents...no, more than represents, actuates in perfection the intersection of God and man. Before the fall, God's creation existed in complete harmony with Himself; since, it has been groaning for recreation, for redemption and continuation of that relationship.

So, for the moment we live in a very unsual time; and yet, it is all we know and have known for a couple thousand years. We live in a fallen world, yet redemption has been not only declared, but justice has been satisfied. The Elect have been sealed, yet we are still to persevere. God has become man, and Christ is seated on the throne; however, creation redeemed still longs for recreation. Christ has come and declared it finished, yet we await His return. We have glimmers of the intersection between God and man - we see it in Scripture and prayer and from the sacraments to the sunrise - and yet, we are sojourners not yet home.

All to say this: in times of trial, it is important for me to remember that not only has God promised to turn evil for good, He has already secured the action of His will to do so. What a gracious gift it is to look at your daughter, to think upon her birth and ingression into your life, and to then be reminded of the grace of God through the birth of His Son to reclaim a fallen world. There is a name I love that is more than a name - it is a promise, a truth that I cling to - Immanuel: God with us.