Season of Preparation Day Fourteen: God’s Son

“Please wash your hands before you hold the baby.” This is the mantra of every first-time parent when someone asks to hold their newborn baby. And for good reason. We care about keeping them safe. After all, they look so tiny and helpless. It’s our job to run interference and protect them from anything that might harm them.

God was apparently a little bit more relaxed about his newborn Son. The Son of God arrived in the care of first-time parents, alone without the guiding experience of family members with newborn baby experience. The Messiah’s welcome to the world was an unsterilized manger in a space meant for animals. His first visitors were shepherds straight from their work tending flocks of sheep. To be clear, if you’ve never worked with sheep, these men were not clean.

To all of these God said, “Here, hold my Son.” And he says it to us today. In all our messiness and sin, God offers us his Son. It’s the only time we hold a child first and then receive the cleaning.

Even when we approach him with the timid uncertainty of first-time parents.

 When we become parents, we daydream about who our child will grow up to be. God never had to wonder about this. His Son was born to teach and heal, but also to die on my behalf—and behalf of all who will follow him. But that isn’t the end of who Jesus is.

We see  who he “grows up to be” when we read Revelation 19:11-16. There we find him seated on a white horse going before the armies of heaven. His eyes are like fire, his robe dipped in blood, and he has a sharp sword for a tongue.

Do I worship this Jesus with the same awe and joy as I have for the newborn Messiah lying helplessly in the manger?

One Jesus I want to hold and the other I want to follow. But I can’t do one without the other.

If I hold the infant Jesus for who he really is, I will want with all my heart to follow him wherever he leads. But if I only want to follow him in his triumphal return without first getting to know him, I’ll miss that moment.

 ^“Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” Matthew 7:22-24

So how do I hold the One who is my Lord and Savior? With care and without hesitation, counting the cost because my life will never be the same again—and it will never be mine again.

This Christmas I want to hold the Christ child in surrender to him now so that I may one day follow him in victory. A victory he’s already won.