To look into the face of a newborn baby is to catch a glimpse of Creator God. It is to see a new life, a blank slate, and to hope for wonderful things to come.
I know that I did this when I looked into the face of my nephew for the very first time. After I got over my fear of breaking him when I held him, all I could do was look at him and pray for his life to be a blessing. I imagined him in school. I wondered if he would be popular and if the kids would like him. I imagined him in college and I wondered if he was going to become a teacher, a preacher, a lawyer, a musician, an engineer, a top business executive, an athlete, or the president. I held him close to my heart and sang sweet prayers of love over his life. Eight years later, he is one of the smartest kids I know and he is learning to play the piano. Yet so many questions are still left to answer. The possibilities of his life are still endless. And no matter what, I will always love him just as I do now and when he was born.
If I feel like that about my nephew, how much more did Mary feel for Jesus? As the shepherds spoke the truth of God’s announcement to her and the others who were near—that on that night a Savior who was Messiah and Master was born in stable in Bethlehem—Mary listened to their words and held them in her heart. She likely dreamed the possibilities of her son’s life and let her mind wonder about all the things he would say, do, and become. But never could she have imagined the full impact of his life.
Nor could the shepherds have imagined that the glory they beheld in Bethlehem would reach the whole world. After recognizing that God fulfills God’s promises and that God had come to earth in human form, the shepherds were left with no other option than to believe that the baby they were looking at was going to grow into someone truly special. But how could they have known that he would become a king whose throne of exaltation would be a cross and whose crown would be a crown of thorns? How could they have known that his kingdom would be the hearts of humankind and that his forgiveness would break the bonds of sin? How could they have known that his love would shatter the laws of cleanliness that had, for too long, kept them from formally worshiping God? They couldn’t have known! Yet they knew that they had beheld something spectacular, and so they left the stable that night praising and worshiping God for all that they had seen and heard.
Just like the shepherds, we may only catch a glimpse of Jesus, yet once we’ve seen him we know that our lives have been changed—we know that we have seen someone whose life and love offer us unending possibilities of grace. We may not know how things are going to turn out in the end—how the economic order will be made over to express the values of God, how the relationship between nations will be lifted above the law of the jungle into some redeeming expression of the law of love, how poverty will be eradicated, how pain and suffering will be lessened, how we will make it through our grief—but through Christ we can know that God’s love is unending and that his possibilities are greater than anything we have ever imagined.
The fullness of God is revealed in the unending possibilities of God’s love.
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