Christmas time is always pictured as joyful and fun and it really can be, especially with children.
This week I have been contemplating baby Jesus and how such an important person was born in such a humble way. Actually, its sad if you think about it, any precious baby being born in a barn with animals all around, laid down in a manger, where the animals eat, with only rags all around him. I went to a living Nativity and it looked so real, I can't put into words how shocking that image was to me.
We hear it in songs and it sounds so charming & normal to us after all these years, but here is the Messiah: who will be the first person to ever die and come back and report to us that we are all going to be OK in heaven with Him, the only person to never do anything wrong in his life--- and he is born into such a chaotic situation. His family is not where they want to be, nobody cares about them in the town where they have to be counted, and in the days after the birth, when it should be nothing but happiness & celebration, they have to run away because all baby boys have been ordered to be killed by the King. Imagine how horrible you'd feel if hundreds of mothers were grieving the loss of their new babies---all because the government was looking for your baby boy.
Every Christmas I get caught up in one Christmas carol more than the others, and I keep hearing the Coventry Carol this year and I love it, its so beautiful and old & powerful.
"Lully, lulla, thou little tiny child
By by, lully, lullay, thou little tiny child
By by, lully lullay
O sisters too, how may we do
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling
For whom we do sing
By by, lully lullay?
Herod, the king
In his raging
Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might
In his own sight,
All young children to slay
That woe is me
Poor child for thee!
And ever morn and day,
For thy parting
Neither say nor sing
By by, lully lullay!"
