In the well known Christmas carol, Away in a Manger, there’s this curious line which is added to the second verse which goes like this:
“The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes. But little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.”

Either the writer of this carol has never heard a cow lowing or has never been close to a newborn baby!
The sound of a cow lowing is a hideous sound to the human ear. In some contexts it can evoke a positive response, like when you visit the countryside and it reaffirms the great escape you’ve just made from the bustling town or city. But when it’s within three feet of you, and you’re fast asleep, that is not a sound you want to hear.

Which brings us to baby Jesus waking up. If you’ve never experienced this firsthand then it’s difficult to describe what it’s like to be woken night after night, every few hours by the sound of your baby crying. Experts say that the frequency of your baby’s cry resonates perfectly with something within the mother’s brain so that she will always hear it and respond, and so she can pick out her own baby’s cry from other babies or sounds.
And to give you a sense of what it might feel like for a mother, consider that one of the interrogation techniques most used by the CIA is sleep deprivation whilst blaring out the sounds of babies crying at high volume into your holding cell. It is a truly unpleasant experience for a mother when her baby is crying for the 50th night in a row, when you’ve only managed to string together 3hrs sleep at a time.

If we accept the premise of this Christmas carol then we are accepting that somehow Jesus wasn’t a ‘normal’ baby. If any of my children hadn’t cried as a normal response, I would have been concerned in case they were ill, or that there might be something else going on.
Jesus was in every way a normal baby. Mary would have breastfed him, changed him when he was wet or had pooped, burped him when he was windy, cuddled him, sang to him, shushed him… whatever it would take to get him to settle to sleep.

This shows us some measure of Mary’s commitment when she said ‘yes’ to the Holy Spirit. We often talk about Mary’s risk in saying yes because she was a virgin and would become pregnant. Dealing with the risks and social stigma of being unmarried and pregnant were significant sacrifices that Mary was willing to make, but we rarely consider the more significant sacrifice that all mothers make with a newborn baby.
To sacrifice sleep night after night. To put your life on hold to prioritise your baby’s needs. To worry as much as delight over such a fragile looking bundle. To endure searing pain whilst breastfeeding because your child must be fed (no bottle feeding 2,000 years ago).

The tragedy which is often unseen is that many mothers suffer greatly with a newborn, especially their first, and they tend to suffer alone. Even as a caring, supportive, helping husband, it is not enough to reach the place where the mother suffers and so in some way it is always destined to be a solitary suffering.
But the suffering is not in vain and there is no human bond quite like that of a mother and child. God knows this which is why part of His gospel message to this world – part of His saving plan – was to model this relationship in Himself; becoming a child in the womb and being nursed and cared for by a mother.

This Advent may we all be thankful for our mothers.
May we know that God entrusted Himself to a mother for our sake and for our salvation.
May we suffer with those who suffer and bless all mothers everywhere, like Mary herself proclaimed in her Magnificat:
“For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:48 ESV)

When we read the gospels through our 21st Century lenses our focus tends to be on the content of the message as we consider the Christmas story. We often overlook the small details because we see them as scene-setters for the main performance. In certain respects this is true, but primarily this is not the case.

The gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus were written in a time and context were a birth narrative was an actual literary genre. Today you might find ‘romance’, or ‘murder mystery’ in a bookshop but 2,000 years ago you would have found different categories including one called ‘birth of the heroes’.
In ancient culture, both Jewish and non-Jewish (which was mostly Greek, or Hellenic), these stories were essential if someone was to be considered a person of importance. The Bible itself contains many birth stories and genealogies, especially for some of its most important characters. Outside of the Bible you will find many Greek stories of gods and heroes and they would almost certainly include the story of the birth, and some important detail which would say something about the god or hero.
It was into this culture that the birth narrative of Jesus was presented and this is helpful to know when reading the stories, because it means that every detail is intentional and carries meaning.

Once you discover this and re-read the gospel accounts of the birth narratives, found in Matthew and Luke, you start to see amazing depth, colour, detail and patterns which you may not have seen before because you simply skipped over them.

This Advent may you read the stories of Jesus’ birth with fresh eyes and through a new lens of meaning.
May you see new things and discover amazing truths that take you deeper into the knowledge of Christ and God’s redemptive plan for the world.
May you know that the ‘small details’ of your own life are as essential to your story as the content and the big scenes.

One of the images of Advent which is often bypassed is that of the pregnancy itself. Often in the Advent narrative the pregnancy features only in its final stages as Mary gives birth to Jesus in Bethlehem, having travelled a great distance fully pregnant.

Overlooking the pregnancy is to overlook one of the most wonderful and beautiful parts of the story – that of the womb. In Luke’s gospel we discover an amazing story where Mary, having consented to the Holy Spirit conceiving Jesus in her womb, goes to visit her aunt Elizabeth who is also pregnant through a miraculous gift. The stand out part of this story is what happens in the womb. In a world without ultrasound scans we get an insight into what is going on inside two wombs.
“41 And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, 42 and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! 43 And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” (Luke 1:41-44 ESV)

There is a mysterious communication which takes place so that John, in Elizabeth’s womb, is aware of Jesus in Mary’s womb and leaps for joy!
That joyful leaping in the womb also causes the Holy Spirit to fill Elizabeth so she can speak those beautiful, poetic, prophetic words.
Elizabeth’s awareness of the unexpected miracle of Mary, a girl, being pregnant with the Messiah comes from her womb through one of the most natural acts during a pregnancy, a baby leaping in the womb.

Not all of us have wombs (I checked with a Dr to verify this!) and not all of those who have wombs have experienced pregnancy, but there is in all of us a kind of ‘womb’ in our souls which is a place of nurturing, a space for growth, where God comes to inhabit as a new life within us. Like Elizabeth, when Jesus comes near to us we experience a kind of ‘leaping’ in our ‘wombs’ of exciting expectation that Jesus is coming.

This Advent may we be like Elizabeth and experience the overwhelming response in our ‘womb’ of Jesus coming near.
May we be filled by the Holy Spirit and hear Elizabeth’s words speaking to us as we reflect that Christ is in us, the hope of glory – “blessed is the fruit of your ‘womb'”.
May our souls be a welcoming place for the indwelling of God and may we be enlarged in the waiting this Advent.

One of the phenomena of our age, which was simply unknown at the time of Jesus’ birth, is the amount of light which we live with.

Electricity has enabled us to live with the light on 24hrs a day. Life in today’s cities, and even suburban areas, is one where total darkness doesn’t exist as there is always light somewhere. Our consumer culture ensures that we can work more and spend more, even as we approach the shortest day.

At the time of Jesus’ birth you wouldn’t need to go far to find yourself in the blackness of night and to experience real darkness. Travelling by night was dangerous because you couldn’t see where you were going, or what dangers were lurking around in the blackness. Work stopped way before sundown and winter nights were not for going shopping.

But inasmuch as the darkness of night was an all-surrounding experience on the ground, the night sky was a different matter altogether. The darker the night at ground level, the more spectacular and brighter the night sky would appear to the observer.
This image of the surrounding darkness being broken by raising your eyes heavenward was not lost on ancient civilisations and cultures. The gods were seen as ‘up there’ whilst humanity fumbled around in the darkness ‘down here’.
Astronomers and astrologers have been observing, measuring, tracking the stars for millennia looking for meaning and seeing things in the sky that are all but lost to us in our age of incandescent lights.

Three magi to the east of Bethlehem were so meticulous in their study of the stars that they noticed when a remarkable new star appeared in the sky.
If you’ve ever seen the night sky when stood in a truly dark place (I have) then you see just how many stars there are visible to the naked eye – countless billions. Looking through any kind of telescope multiplies this number by several orders of magnitude, so it was truly impressive for the magi to spot this new star.

The star must have been remarkable because they tracked it and then followed it believing it to be a sign of something, or someone, important about to enter the world.
In the midst of a dark world they saw a twinkling light which changed their lives as they followed it in search of what it was going to illuminate and expose by its tiny light.

2,000 years on and for us the darkness is obscured by light. We are constantly bombarded by light so we never notice the contrast between light and darkness or get used to a scene in which we can spot a change as tiny and as distant as a twinkling star.

It was into this darkness 2,000 years ago that the Light of heaven descended.
When you are used to the darkness, any amount of light is impressive, and the brighter the light, the more it contrasts with the darkness.
And like the magi, the more you are aware of the detail of your daily scene, the more you notice when something new appears.

This Advent may the constant light of our consumer culture not obscure the darkness which frames the small twinkling light of Jesus’ coming.
May you notice the new light of Jesus’ appearing in the same patterns and forms of our present age as He continually brings something new into this world.
May you, like the magi, follow the Light to the place of worship in the midst of the darkness of this world.

“What a strange place to put such a special baby”.
These were the words of my 7yr old daughter when considering Jesus being laid in a manger. I later discovered she was quoting a line from her upcoming school Christmas play, but the line struck a chord.

It is indeed a very strange place to put such a special baby.
But that is perhaps the point. The two ways in which the power of the universe – the Logos – could have entered this world in a noticeable way would have been to either come in splendour and glory, a bit like the angelic host appearing to the shepherds, or in a remarkably understated and strange way, a bit like being laid in a manger. He chose the latter. And that was the point.

When the first angel appeared to the shepherds he said, “And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” Luke 2:12 ESV
The ‘strange place’ becomes the sign.

The shepherds quickly found the baby and the manger and it seems that the manger wasn’t so strange to them and helped them go directly to where the baby might be.
In contrast the heavenly apparition of the angels was strange and filled them with fear, but the ‘strange place’ of the manger was neither strange nor fearful.
It was a place of great joy which resulted in wondrous worship.

Is our response to Jesus being laid in the manger one of strangeness and surprise, or a place where we know we can find the One we’re searching for?

This Advent may the ‘strange place’ of the manger be a place of discovery.
May you find your saviour, not in the familiar and safe places, but in the unfamiliar and unexpected places.
May it be a sign to you, as it was for the shepherds, that leads you to the place where you will find Him.

Advent is all about waiting. Waiting for a ‘coming’, for an arrival.

For most of us the focus is on the immediate, near future; the 24-day countdown to the ‘arrival’ of Christmas Day.

For Christians the focus tends to be more on the past with the arrival of the Logos coming into the world, taking on skin and fat and becoming the newborn baby we know as Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem.

Whilst both of these foci of Advent are valid and good, there’s another focus which is equally valid, and arguably far more exciting.
This is the Advent of Jesus coming again to bring this age to a close and to establish, forever, the life to come in the age to come. It’s integral to our understanding of who Jesus is and what He has done for us that He returns. It’s the natural end to a supernatural reality of resurrection. It reminds us that Jesus isn’t just a Divine entity from another realm, but that He also remains today the wounded flesh-and-blood man who resurrected from the dead.
If His first Advent was significant because God became like one of us, then His second Advent is significant because now we become like Him; the “perishable putting on the imperishable”.

This Advent, may you awaken to the truth that God became like you so that you might become like Him.
May you find yourself waiting for His coming with joyful anticipation and expectation.
May you know that He who began a good work in you will bring it to perfect shalom.