Holy Infant, So Tender and Mild (Friday Devotional)

 

Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

- Philippians 2:6-7

You don’t realize quite how fragile babies are until you’re confronted with that fact.

My son Isaac was born last Thursday morning, delivered by C-section at Baylor Hospital in Dallas. While his arrival was a few days ahead of schedule, the surgery itself was perfectly routine—the doctor and nurses were joking around with us, music was playing in the OR, and Lindsey and I were excited but not especially nervous. When the doctor presented Isaac to us at 2:51 AM, all 9 lb. and 7 oz. of him, everybody’s comments—including ours—were about how big he was, how healthy, how strong.

But as the minutes turned into hours, we hit a snag. Every time the nurses checked his blood sugar, it was lower than it was supposed to be, requiring supplementary care—glucose gel, enriched formula, etc.—to get it up to where it needed to be. After a 4^th failed blood sugar test, the pediatrician on call broke the news to us—Isaac would need to be moved to the NICU to receive a dextrose drip until his body started to figure out how to regulate its own blood sugar.

So for those precious first days of life, our baby boy had an IV in his little arm, a pulse oximeter wrapped around his tiny foot, and three different leads stuck to his chest to measure vital signs. He was watched over by an amazing team of nurses, but was unable to leave the NICU—including to meet his brother and sister. It wasn’t until Sunday night, after more than 3 days of observation and progress, that he was released to our care and we were able to breathe easy. For 3 long days, we were reminded just how small babies really are.

At this time of year, we remember a different birth, one that in so many ways was far more precarious. There was no operating room, no surgical instruments, not even a doctor when Mary delivered Jesus. There was no hospital, much less a NICU, to treat him if he’d gotten sick. When Jesus was born on that not-so-silent night, it was far from the serene, romanticized, sentimental picture we imagine today. It was dangerous. It was frightening. There was blood on the ground.

But the same Savior who would eventually go to the cross took no shortcuts on the road to our salvation. From Bethlehem to Golgotha, Jesus—though fully God—was also fully human, entering the world as a baby. He knew all the frailties of infancy just as he would know all the temptations of manhood—but for us, he traded the glories of heaven for the travails of earth.

The Word which was from the beginning, the Word which was with God and was God, the Word through whom all things all things were made—the Word became flesh and lived among us. The Alpha and Omega became a baby. Think about that the next time you look at the small, feeble body of an infant. I know I will.