Merry Christmas

Last night, as I was falling asleep, I remembered a video of Jo and Noe (my twin daughters) as babies; they were barely a year old, in their tiny pink and blue frocks tottering about, falling often, running to me and loving me. I thought how, even now, as they've grown almost as tall as me - so independent in thought and deed - I catch glimpses of the baby versions of them. I see it in the way one of their toes leans to one side, in the way they giggle, in their bony fingers and in their little belly buttons. 

I catch glimpses of baby them in their girlish faces. And sometimes that's what keeps me going through the growing pains. 

Their cute chubby faces, the toothless grins, the way they said, 'amma' in their squeaky voices, the utter innocence and purity helps me be patient and loving with the sometimes rebellious, sometimes cute, sometimes aggravating and sometimes kind daughters of mine. 

And it struck me that God knew humanity as perfect, as His perfect friends who loved Him truly and completely - at least for a brief period of time. God was all humanity had and God was all they needed. What a perfect, beautiful life where God enjoyed us and our friendship, and humanity rested secure in His infinite and Perfect Love. 

So, through the ages, as some of God's people longingly waited for the Messiah, while the rest of the world (and many of His chosen ones) continued in the path of destruction and blatant disobedience to God, was it His memory of our perfect and holy selves - which strolled with him in the Garden - that kept Him going? Through the prophets, through the Kings, through the Judges, through the rejection, through the idolatory, through the complete disregard of His Word,  until on a cold night, in a lowly manger - dirty, reeking of excerement, not fit for humans, much less for the birth of baby - God was born? Jesus, who was born so as to offer himself in death to once again restore to us the perfection and holiness that the Triune God had desired and designed.  

We do not deserve this unfailing, never-giving up, eternal love from a Father so merciful, so loving and infinitely generous that He spared not His own Son to redeem this world and the people He created and loved. Yet, we will accept, in downright unworthiness, this charity, this pity and this fierce love if it means that we can once again be His own through the atoning Blood of His Son. 

Emmanuel! God with us. 

Merry Christmas.