"Our baby is growing up so fast."

It's a common sentiment among new parents. All of the sudden she starts crawling or walking or he says his first word and we start to wonder where the time has gone. It's been said only half jokingly that we spend the first few years of a child's life teaching them to walk and talk and the next 16 or more years trying to get them to sit down and be quiet.

Luke records that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in the blink of an eye he is a twelve year old theological prodigy stumping the religious teachers with his amazing insights on the Holy Scriptures. And while we always like to paint Jesus in a perfect and innocent light, his response to mom that she should have known he would be in his "Father's House" could easily be taken as back talk and would certainly have gotten most kids in our century a pop on the mouth, or at the very least a long ride home with no tablet or cell phone.

Mary didn't understand, but she cherished every word in her heart…

"God and Jesus," we often say, as if they are separate. And often the Holy Spirit barely gets honorable mention.

Yet we worship GOD the Father, GOD the Son, and GOD the Holy Spirit... God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity.

Even with our theological framework of this great mystery, that God himself came to earth and put on flesh to dwell among us and show us how to live, we still tend to distance the human Christ from the Almighty Heavenly Being whom we call God.

God often feels so distant, so Holy, so other, so incomprehensible, and sometimes even unapproachable. We talk as if God's got bigger problems to deal with than our petty concerns, but often this is only an excuse to cover up the pain we feel from the prayers we think God didn't answer. After all, why should we expect the Creator of the Universe to be concerned about our jobs, our health, even our insignificant lives or the lives of our loved ones. Everybody struggles. Everybody dies. Why should God care?

Babies, on the other hand, are close. We wrap them in our arms. We care for them. We hold them close and take joy in their smiles, their bright innocent eyes, their laughter, their warmth. We feel responsible to protect them in their vulnerable state. We don't look away for a second. We keep them under constant supervision for years to make sure no harm comes to them. Babies are nothing like God.

And yet we are to believe that God became a baby? That an all powerful God made himself so weak and vulnerable?…

"Go Big or Go Home"

That's the motto of our culture. Everything has to be big. Everything is evaluated on size. The size of our homes. The size of our bank accounts. The size of our office (metaphorically speaking as a symbol of how high on the corporate ladder we have climbed). The size of our social networks.

In the church world it translates to the size of our congregations, our buildings, our offerings, our events, etc. Bigger is always better and the bottom line on our statistical reports often determines whether or not a church is perceived as healthy or dying.

And if all of these things are not getting bigger, it is often assumed that something is wrong with us.

But sometimes bigger is not better…

"Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright..."

While I have a hard time believing that baby Jesus didn't cry at all, or that giving birth among the livestock was a calm and peaceful experience, there is a very real sense in which God's grand entrance into our world was done in silence. Even the priest was unable to speak about the birth of his own son who would be the prophet proclaiming the coming of the Lord…