Baby King

My best friend, Katherine, has a new little niece. Born just a few days ago, the baby is tiny and innocent. Though I haven't met her yet, I've been stalking the (many) pictures of her on Facebook, and she is absolutely beautiful.

Babies are so small, so helpless. They cry, eat, poop, sleep, smile, wave their tiny arms, and look absolutely adorable. They can't feed themselves, sit up, much less stand, express their needs or desires with anything more than a cry.

I can't imagine what it would be like to be a baby, not able to do anything myself, to depend on everyone around me for my every need. To not be able to help myself.

While singing What Child Is This at church, I was thinking about this. We talk about Jesus being a baby, how He was born of the virgin Mary. Little baby Jesus seems normal, makes sense, because I've grown up thinking and talking and celebrating this infant God.

But think about it. Imagine if you became a baby. You left your home, your family, entered a strange, dark, place. You're already in unfamiliar territory, and to add to it all, you become an infant, helpless and entirely dependent on a teenage mother.

Jesus offered us the greatest sacrifice when He came to earth and died for us. But that sacrifice didn't start when He was beaten and killed, it started when He became an infant and was born like any other human.

As a baby, Jesus couldn't do anything. It really shows how fully human He was when He was on earth. He was just like any other baby, needing to be given food and have His diaper changed. That must have been a little surreal and strange for Mary and Joseph! Changing the diapers of the Messiah. I can't even imagine.

I also can't imagine how that must have been for Jesus.

From King to kid, how humble Jesus was and is. To choose to become so helpless, to choose to relinquish all His power and might, to choose to be one of us. His sacrifice was so much more than dying, it was living too.

He lived for us, He died for us.

He asks the same of us.

We shouldn't just be willing to die for Christ, okay with giving Him everything. We should be living for Him too, giving Him every moment, every breath, every desire. Jesus gave us His life, we should give Him our lives in return. Not out of obligation, not out of guilt, but because He loves us so much how could we not love Him too?

He is King. Today we celebrate His life, the beginning of His beautiful sacrifice, and the beginning of an even more beautiful story of the truest love ever known, a story that continues being told every single day.