A child is born

I recently narrated our Children's Christmas program at church. It was a very simple production in which the children enacted the story of the birth of Jesus as I told the story. It is so strange how such a familiar story can still be experienced from a new angle. A simple story that is as nuanced as a fine wine. A story one can savor over the course of a lifetime.

I suppose there are many things we encounter in life like this. As time passes, as circumstances in our life come and go, we gain different perspectives and insights. These create new meaning regarding such familiar stories, regarding our own memories and regarding the people we know. I still think of myself as very young, yet already in awe of the way the passage of time seems to reveal new facets of what was once thought to be so concrete and true, adding a richness to joy, and helping bring healing to pain. Perspective. Insight. Experience.

I'm reminded of the legacy that can be told by one who is familiar with reading the rings of a fallen tree. Are our lives not too unlike these trees? If there were a way to peer upon a cross-section of our spirits would there not be a legacy of the droughts, the fires and the years of abundance and growth? Would there not be a wonderful and mysterious story to be told of how those times mingled together, touched one another and made way for the next to come, ultimately creating the plane for the present and the days yet unannounced? I would not be who I am today if it weren't for what has already passed. Yet does not the present just as much inform the past?

Long ago, a young woman was visited by an angel. She was terrified at this holy apparition but the angel somehow spoke soothing words that brought a peace beyond understanding to the core of this young woman's soul. She humbly accepted her role. She forsook all claim to dignity and pride as she carried a child she could not rationally explain. And when it came time, and the pains of labor were at their height, she and her husband were still searching for a place for her to lie. Finally, they crept into a stable where amidst the animals a small babe cried out into the night, filling his lungs with air he had long before once breathed. As she peered intently at this small being and brought him to her breast, the words that soothed her months before faintly echoed in the stillness of that moment, again flooding her soul.

In this I am reminded that for every moment of confusion, of pain, of disappointment, are words that transcend their own boundaries, that speak at a soul level, and that enter into and forever alter the experience of that time.