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God the Father does
what
all new parents do:
He shows off
the baby. Parents come with that little bundle in the baby carrier as
if to say, "Look what we got. Look what we did." People
flock around. They ooh and aah and compete to touch and hold as if
they've never seen anything like it before. People have been having
babies for thousands of years. Babies are nothing new. But the baby is
always new. Babies never cease to be a wonder, a miracle, a mystery.
Some of the wonder spills over to the parents. The parents show off
the baby, but the baby also shows off the parents. People see the
parents in a new light. It is no less the case with God. At
Christmastime in the Holy Communion liturgy, the presiding minister
sings, "In the wonder and mystery of the Word made flesh you have
opened the eyes of faith to a new and radiant vision of your glory,
that, beholding the God made visible, we may be drawn to love the God
whom we cannot see." God shows off the baby. The baby shows off
God.
God the Father does what all new
parents do,
but does it in a way no new parent can:
One set of new
parents in the neighborhood erected a pair of giant plywood storks in
their front yard to show off to the neighborhood the arrival of their
twins. Actually, as you might have guessed, it was the father who
erected the plywood storks. His wife bore the twins. The storks were
him saying, "See, I can do something, too." Mary had the
baby. God lowered a star into the heavens, God's front yard, to show
off Jesus' birth to the cosmos, God's neighborhood.
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
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