Little Bethlehem manger:
People have stopped by to spend the night in this humble dwelling. The earthen floors and vine covered walls show how close to returning to nature the structure is. Was the manger that Joseph found much different from this?
The beginning of mystery incarnate:
The little baby who comes into our world also comes forth from it. The elements in his tiny hands did not come down from heaven but rather emerged from our mother Earth. But we believe there is so much more to this child than simple elements or even a blessed, living planet. More than any other day we are drawn to contemplate the closeness of this child to highest heaven and humblest earth.
God comes to Earth:
With our emerging consciousness about interplanetary space (let alone intergalactic space), the vastness of God the Almighty can leave us feeling impossibly tiny or even insignificant. In the knowledge of countless mega galaxies, each with over two trillion stars, the thought that the Creator of all this would send his Son to a tiny part of the whole... to just one blue dot in the vastness of space... seems incredibly arrogant -- one more tragic fruit of the boundless ego of human beings.
We believe:
But we do believe that the little baby in Mary's arms is God born among us. In quantum physics we learn the astounding fact of the unbreakable link between the smallest subatomic particles and the largest structures in the Universe. Everything is related... so the baby is inseparable from the Universe. The Creator sustains all living as well as inanimate things in this Universe as well as any other parallel universes. This ultimate mystery wants to be known as a baby who looks into Joseph's eyes and likes to be held in his arms.
Is that snow on those reeds?
The baby does not see Christmas lights nor fancy decorations. Perhaps he sees something like the glow of sugar cane as it reflects the sunlight. Few people would expect to find sugar cane growing on the top of a mountain. We presume that it must grow only on the big plantations close to sea level. Yet there are the reeds bending in the wind at three thousand feet. The ultimate surprise is God blessing us with the sweetness in the eyes of a little baby who finds pure delight in the gaze of his mother Mary.
