Season of Preparation Day Eleven: God’s Hope

For those of us old enough to remember, few days will ever compare to the emotional experience of September 11, 2001. The shock numbed us into a state of disbelief while the horror paralyzed us with fear. We were disoriented, humble, and grasping for a hope that seemed lost behind the appalling images of evil that bombarded us that day.

In a day filled with memories I’d rather not recall, there is one that stands out as worthy of never being forgotten. As a stay-at-home mom with three-year-old twins too young to understand, I needed to get them—and myself—away from the chaos of the news. I couldn’t stay frozen in fear, so out for a walk in the fields behind our house we went.

As I walked along absorbed in my thoughts, they ran several yards ahead. And then I heard it. Like the tinkling of ice crystals breaking through a day that had gone silent—laughter. The sound of pure and innocent joy falling like diamonds into an empty despair.

My steps froze. I felt a little like Saul when he got knocked down on the road to Damascus.

What I heard was the sound of hope.

In the children, there is always hope.

How much greater that feeling of hope must be to behold the Christ child born on that first Christmas. I wonder if people felt the same swelling peace inside their chests when they first heard the cooing sounds he made.

Did weary hearts warm when he smiled? Did downcast souls fill with unexpected joy? When he cried in the night as babies do, did people quicken to perceive that something was wrong?

That September day in 2001, it wasn’t my mind that perceived hope in the sound of my kids laughing. It was my heart.

But in my honesty, I admit too often I try to recognize Jesus with my mind instead of my heart. I try to understand the mystery with my mind, disregarding the things my heart tells me. I try to know Jesus though learning instead of the stirrings of my heart.

When we seek to find hope through the textbook like study of the Scriptures, we find only a fragile hope and a shallow understanding.

I can read everything there is to know about babies, but until I truly behold an infant I can’t understand how fragile my knowing is.

And the wonderful thing about babies is this. When we first see a newborn, before we know a thing about them—their favorite color, if they prefer chocolate or vanilla, beach or mountains, what things will be them laugh, what frightens them and what draws their curiosity—before we know anything at all, we experience hope rising inside us. An excited, anxious joy-filled expectancy.

How much greater the shepherds must have experienced those things when they beheld the newborn Messiah that night.

This Christmas I want to silence the world around me and listen to the tiny infant in the manger—his laughter of joy, his cooing of peace, and his cries of warning. I want to hear Jesus with my heart and soul.