When Maggie was three days old we brought her home from the hospital. I walked back into the living room, and there she was on the couch, still swaddled in the hospital blanket, and she was so perfect and so beautiful that I walked over and kneeled. I kneeled because I wanted to be close to her, to put my face next to hers, and that’s why we kneel at Christmas, too—why we celebrate Christmas.
Christ is all our daughters and all our sons. Christ is everything beautiful and perfect, and she’s sleeping on the couch. He is lying in the manger. All we should want is to be close to him. All we should ever want is to kneel and put our face close to his.
There is something greater and more important and more beautiful than who we are alone. There is the body; there is sadness; there is death. There are other people, and history, and tradition—all these things we didn’t create. There is joy beyond measure.
adapted from my
Light When It Comes: Trusting Joy, Facing Darkness, and Seeing God in Everything (Eerdmans 2016)