It Was Not a Silent Night (Friday Devotional)

 

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

- John 1:14

Traditional depictions of the nativity are portraits of serenity—Mary and Joseph kneel stoically on either side of the manger, the animals gather ‘round in a semicircle, an angel hovers above the stable’s perfectly symmetrical roof, and in the middle of it all, the Christ child lays sleeping. All is calm, all is bright.

We do ourselves a disservice when we think of Christ’s birth in that picture-perfect manner. Because Jesus didn’t simply “come into” this world, he was born. In conditions fit only for animals, Mary’s water broke onto a dirt floor. She screamed and pushed, likely for hours, with little idea when relief would come. And when God’s Son entered this world, he emerged shrieking a newborn’s cry, with blood cloaking his skin and with an umbilical cord tying him to his mother until Joseph found a blade sharp enough to cut it.

Details like these, the messy particulars of birth, are as important a part of the story as the angels’ alleluias, because they remind us that the Word became flesh, that Jesus was as human as he was divine. They remind us that his humanity was not a disguise, but reality—he ate, drank, slept, and breathed, just like you and me. And when he ultimately went to the cross, the pain he suffered was real pain, the blood he shed was real blood, the death he died was a real death.

It can be tempting to elevate the stories of Jesus, from the manger to the empty tomb, to an entirely spiritual plain, to lose sight of the fact that these were historical events involving flesh-and-blood people. But to consign Jesus to stained glass, to wash the dirt and the blood from his story, is to ignore part of what makes his story such good news. In Christ, the Word became flesh and lived among us—and while he saw us in all our messiness and fragility, we saw his glory, full of grace and truth.

The Lord knew all the unpleasantness this world had to offer and came anyway, experiencing that unpleasantness firsthand from birth to death. And in resurrection, he gives us a chance for something better—not a silent night, but a joyous eternity.