Today was a poignant day for me. What seemed like a routine doctor’s visit became something else altogether. It was an ebenezer, of sorts, a remembrance of where my family has come from, of where I have come from. You see, six and a half months ago I met a little girl, a beautiful but fragile little girl. On the other side of the world. In an ancient city called Pune. In a little white orphanage with cracked walls, with faded paint and a dusty cement floor. She’d been born of another woman but was ordained to be my daughter from the beginning of all time. A mystery I still can’t fathom.
I will never forget the first time her mahogany eyes looked into mine. And I will never forget how I saw myself in them, a reflection of bittersweet joy. Because I had longed to hold her for so long, and when I finally did I saw the full extent of her desperation.
She cried. Afraid. Terribly afraid. Not knowing who I was. Not realizing that love had finally found her. She cried because she’d borne so much pain before we’d ever met and she could only see me filtered through that filmy lens. She couldn’t see me as I was - the one who wanted to love her.
They said she was sick. They said she had failure to thrive. They said she wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t grow. And I saw the scars on her skin. The infections and discomfort. I saw the hollow look in her eyes. She was barely alive. She’d barely survived to the day that I first held her. Battled for her very existence. A miracle child.
And I carried her home. Across miles of mountainous landscape and ancient rivers. Over war torn countries and cavernous depths of ocean we flew. And she never left my arms. Even when she slept, I was there; my hand was over her. I never left her. Not once.
She arrived in this strange new land with strange new people. A frightening arrival, because she didn’t know that Home had finally found her. She feared she was lost, that she would never return to the cracked walls and the dusty floor she remembered. The doctors said she was severely malnourished. Developmentally delayed. Neglected. She had feeding issues, social issues, relational issues. Her swallowing reflexes weren’t strong enough. She couldn’t stand. She could hardly hold herself up to be seated. The list went on and on, and the road ahead seemed long. Perhaps it would be a life-long journey. So we set our eyes on the path and our hearts on the goal.
For months we tried to feed her. We labored for each bite. Each swallow. We fought the everyday battles for her heart. And inch by inch, she learned to trust. We taught her how to use a bottle. How to be held and rocked. She learned to eat. She learned to crawl and then to stand. She learned to smile. And then to laugh. I heard my child laughing and it was one of the sweetest sounds I’d ever heard. And then one day she took her first steps. She walked, even though the physicians in India had not been sure if she ever would take a step.
Six and a half months of laboring. Doctors appointments, specialists, nutritionists, hospitals and more. Poked, prodded, examined and x-rayed. Diagnoses and predictions. All coming up short. Because all she had needed…was love.
She needed to know Love.
Today she had her last follow up appointment. She’s gained a total of eight pounds (nearly twice the weight she’d been when we brought her home) and she was four inches longer! My heart swelled with joy. The doctor sat with me and asked me some questions about my little girl’s progress. I answered them all, each one with a positive reply. Then the doctor laid open the medical file and began to write. She made a list inside my child’s records, and as she wrote she said it aloud for my benefit: “Orphaned, malnourished, neglected, failure to thrive, swallowing difficulties, developmentally delayed…”
Her list was long, and I found them hard to hear with the chubby, radiant child smiling back at me in my lap. It was painful to remember my daughter like that. And I wondered what the list meant. Why would the doctor take the time to write all of these things in the record now, after everything?
The physician stopped; she looked up at my daughter for a moment, introspectively, and then looked back to the list. With one long, decisive strike she crossed the list out, a line drawn through it. I held my breath as I watched. She made an arrow at the bottom of that line and pointed it to the words she wrote beneath.
“All. Resolved.” She said in her thick Middle Eastern accent.
And those words of absolution made my throat catch. Made my eyes well up with tears. I had to say it again in my head to be sure it was true. All resolved…. All resolved. And the physician smiled with me.
I could not tell you the relief that flooded over me with that declaration. The freedom I felt from the fears that had plagued us for the previous year and a half. Lightness and joy now washed every one of those fears away. This was the greatest Christmas gift I could have received: Hope. This child will know life and know it fully. The weight of her past was being lifted away. And though I know there will be hard days ahead, as with any child, today I felt the full realization of peace. After the agonizing wait to bring her home, and the fear for her health and her future, she was home in my arms. She was safe. And now she was well. All of the unknowns and all of the fears had been resolved.
“You rescued this child,” the physician said in all seriousness. “You know that is the greatest thing any person can do? To save the life of another human being.” The milky gaze through her glasses was tearing up now. “And you will have a big castle in heaven.”
I shook my head. That was all wrong, though I knew her intentions were kind, and that in all her seriousness she probably believed it to be true. But the synopsis was reversed. I was the one who had been rescued, and my love for this child was just a small glimpse of that much bigger story. A microcosm of the greater One. The far greater work. My works were filthy rags. Even my attempts to love this child as Jesus loved are worthless. Nothing without Him.
Because you see, there was another child. Born many years ago. On the other side of the world. In an ancient town called Bethlehem, with cracked walls and dusty floors. Conditions far worse than the orphanage I found my daughter in. This was a baby born of a woman, who also came to a strange land with strange people. A baby who cried when he breathed his first breath, just like you and me. And He must have been afraid. Because unlike my child coming into a strange world, He knew where he was going. He knew the purpose for which he had come. A child ordained for a purpose much greater than any man had ever known. Born to become the Hero of mankind; born to die. The God man. Emmanuel - God with us. The most miraculous child of all. A mystery I can’t fathom.
But I can imagine that dirty stable a little bit better now, that filthy hole in the ground where the God of the universe condescended into flesh as the most vulnerable creature possible – a human baby. Defenseless. Reliant on the arms that held him. As fragile as my baby had been. And somehow in this divine mystery, the hands that had defined the universe and laid out the stars were now clinging to an earthly mother for warmth in the chill of night. Beneath the very moon He created.
The bright sun of Heaven, now the light of the world. Without any beauty or majesty that we should recognize Him. He put on flesh to dwell with us.
It’s so curious, isn’t it? Why the God of the universe chose this method to reach us. Maybe before that precious Baby came we couldn’t view God rightly. We could only see Him through the filmy lenses of sin and depravity. We couldn’t see Him as He was in Heaven: The One who wanted to love us. And so to view Him - as He revealed Himself - to view the manger as God intended, we must also view the cross. The inseparable ‘coming’ and ‘reason He came’. The whole reason that Heaven and earth collided and the veil was lifted for those thirty three years when God walked among us. And the reason was this:
Love found us. Love came to rescue us.
The humble beginning in a manger was only the foreshadowing of His work to come, His servanthood. It was only a foretaste of how He would enter human frailty completely to fight the battle for us in physical death. The yoke of our burdens would be upon Him. The Hero of mankind would have to become the Man of Sorrows first. Stricken by grief and afflicted. The pain of sin and death, the punishment for all of it, would be upon that Baby’s shoulders. And not just my burden, but yours, and his, and hers and theirs. All of them. All of us, who were and are and are yet to be born. Those sons and daughters He has called to Himself in His infinitely divine mercy. The mighty crushing weight of all of our human distress. Our utter clamoring desperation. Hollow eyed, sickly skinned, wretched creatures of our own demise. Enemies of God. Unable to know His love.
If all of that burden was lain upon one Man, how great must the burden have been? So much sorrow. So much sin. So much death and darkness. I cannot comprehend the burden of it. And how it grieves me to know that my own burden is in that awful heap! It was my terrible weight that helped to crush Him!
This one thought gives me comfort in the knowledge of Christ’s indescribable sufferings: How much greater must His love have been for us, to carry ALL of this to the cross willingly and slay it there upon Himself? His love for us had to have been greater than all of the sorrow and sin of this world combined. It had to have been immeasurably greater.
And my daughter’s physician was right. The greatest thing any one person could do is to save the life of another human being. To save just one life. So how much greater is Christ then, who saved many from every nation, from every people, through all of history. And more: The life He gives to those He saves is everlasting, never to be lost again.
A Savior. In the purest, truest, most beautiful and perfect understanding of the word.
God’s reconciliation for us. The greatest gift ever given.
And I will never forget the first time I met Him. How I saw myself for the first time in His eyes. The reflection of my complete forgiveness being understood. The reflection of my new-found hope and purest joy received. I will never forget how I saw Him, because I knew then that Love had found me.
I know that in my feeble nature I am still learning to trust Him. Inch by inch He battles for my fully-surrendered heart each day, even though the final battle is already won - I am already His child, and I cannot lose that inheritance. Still, He is teaching me how to be held by Him. I’m learning that His arms are safe. Over time I have learned to crawl. To eat. To stand. And still I teeter as I learn to walk these years later. Someday I hope to run this great race as other saints before me have run. But He has been there. He is carrying me homeward to His unveiled presence. Over the war torn lands and high mountains I never could have crossed on my own. Over the murky rivers and cavernously deep oceans that would have swallowed me for certain. Even when I’ve slept, His hand was over me. He has never left me. Not once.
And I imagine that maybe this list could have been made about me before Love came to rescue me that very first Christmas: Liar, cheater, gossiper, slothful, spiteful, prideful, broken, wanton, hurting, hopeless, motherless, godless …
But a strike has now been made through my list, a list far longer than I have given here. And far more shameful, I’m afraid. That list was struck from the record by my Savior.
No…
It was struck ON my Savior. And the strike that was needed was not one of ink, but one of blood. The most precious blood of all. Spilled for me. So that these words could finally be written of me: All. Resolved.
That is the story of Christmas. That is the ebenezer I place in the ground today. I will remember from where I came. And I will look on the manger with eyes that have also looked on the cross. I will see Him now, with the film of sin and depravity peeled back from my eyes. He is the God of Heaven, come down, the One who has loved me from before time began. The One who has ordained in His mercy to call me His own, before I ever had a formed mouth to call on Him. The One who made the moon and placed the stars. The One who remembers how He formed me and knows that I am only dust.
I am His. I rejoice in my adoption. I sit radiantly upon His lap. A lost child - found. A sinner – forgiven. A wretched and depraved heart – cleansed. My brokenness - made whole. My sin – resolved. And my separation from a Holy God – resolved.
All. Resolved.
