Chinook
by George Hosier II  - December 26, 2007

One Tiny Baby

A tendril of hay curled against his tiny pink cheek, fluttering gently each time he exhaled. Was it possible that this adorable little sigh of sleeping contentment, audible only to his mother’s attentive ears, had before the dawn of time thundered into a crescendo of creative power like the roar of a trillion Niagaras? The breath of his life, now lightly frothing the lingering residue of his mother’s milk between rose bud lips, had once commanded the universe into existence!

Things that had never been before had burst into reality even as they coalesced in his imagination. When he voiced his will, light had exploded from the darkness in dazzling fireworks of vivid color. In the stark void of emptiness, nebulae and supernovae and galaxies had blossomed. On a new rock called Earth, oceans had condensed, mountains had speared upward from the plains and a riot of life had erupted. Platypus and orchids, amoebas and blue whales, black-capped chickadees and aloe vera, pineapple coral and blue-green algae, crawfish and fruit bats, spotted newts and humans: all sprang into being like a scene filling the canvas under the swift brush-strokes of a brilliant master artist.

How was it then that this rough-hewn manger, scarred from the teeth of generations of dumb sheep and polished by countless cattle tongues, should cradle him now? Was it possible that he, the germinating origin of all life, now lay at the mercy of the inexperienced hands of a teenaged Judean girl and the clumsy callused hands of her laborer fiancée? The design of his mother’s slender jointed fingers with their opposable thumbs and intricate network of tendons, ligaments, blood vessels and skin would now undergo its ultimate field test as they bathed and wrapped and hugged close the creator who had engineered their very capacity to do so.

He had divested himself of his omnipotence when he disrobed, to shrug over his spirit the flesh and blood of this helpless baby boy. Since then, his eyes had not yet opened. He could not walk. He could not speak. He was not even fully aware of his surroundings. Most of his daily schedule was now spent in the subconsciousness of healthy sleep. No onlooker could have guessed that the fate of a planet was clenched in the chubby fist of this fragile infant.

For four thousand years the Ancient of Days had promised a deliverer. The one and only true creator God had been assuring His people that He would someday send a Savior to break the curse of sin. However, even though the Hebrews worshiped the great “I Am” with the mysterious name that they declined to pronounce for awe of His fiery holiness, even His divine promises seemed hollow. While they waited, Sin overwhelmed the world. It spread like a blighting fungus wherever men walked and fought and lusted and hated and died.

Sin oozed into dungeons and salt mines and galleys where men forced their brothers to slave like beasts of burden, slowly strangling their spirits until their broken bodies collapsed to be discarded like offal. Women, trapped in a sin-mesmerized culture that regarded them as exploitable property, bartered the last of their self-respect in exchange for food, shelter, gold or an impersonal embrace masquerading as love. Sin consumed the palatial halls of ruthless despots like the desert tribesman pretender, Herod the Great, who ordered his own sons strangled because their mother was of Israel’s Hasmonean aristocracy and Herod dared tolerate no rivals. Sin festered within the enclaves of clerics and theologians who craved power enough to excommunicate their own God and extort His worship unto themselves.

Yet for the moment all was tranquil there at the manger. The God-child lay cordoned within concentric rings of massive sentry angels bearing drawn swords of pure white flame. Just beyond the flickering shadows that marked the perimeter, Sin circled warily, snarling in frustration.

With eyes that captured the sword light and distorted its reflection into glowing brimstone embers, Sin’s minions bayed in a paroxysm of rage and dread. Greed, Jealousy, Insanity, Perversion, Pride and Cruelty squabbled. Unable to slake their desire to dash in and rend the throat of this feeble stranger who had invaded their turf, instead, they gnashed on each other with fang and claw. They feared the heavenly host that guarded this baby, but more than that, they quivered in craven, impotent terror of the Ancient of Days himself who they knew inhabited this baby’s body.

What was He doing here, this soft, pink morsel of incarnation? It didn’t really matter. They would bide their time. It would be many years before His human form would have grown enough to present any kind of threat. Many things could happen between now and then. Babies die quietly in the night. Toddlers fall down wells. Horses trample children. Teenagers break bones that never heal properly, reducing them to cripples. Falling rocks crush young men. If, by some miracle, He managed to avoid their schemes long enough to be initiated into the unforgiving grinding-mill of war and politics, a thousand ghastly deaths served at the beck and call of violent men who themselves were slaves of Sin and Hell.

Still, the minions were uneasy. Whatever the inscrutable reason that brought Him here like this, it could bode them no good. He had the power to snuff out them and all He had created with but a flicker of His eye. The reason He had come, then, was clearly not for judgment. Nor was it primarily to solicit awe! He could have appeared as a powerful angelic warrior. He could have visited Earth as a lightning-punctuated tornado of nuclear energy. He could have trodden the mountains in the guise of a mythic giant god of human legend. He could have settled to earth in a saucer shaped craft, claiming to be an alien ancestor of the human race, returning to assist them in the evolutionary leap toward cosmic oneness. If He had chosen to coerce the worship of the humans by seducing them with a display of his power, nothing Sin could muster would have been able to stop Him. Yet, instead, He had taken up residence in a helpless human baby that couldn’t even feed himself!

This wasn’t fair! Humans belonged to Hell. True, they had originally been the I Am’s crowning creation. Made in His image, they had been given dominion over all that He had created on earth. But that was before they had legally and contractually forfeited their favored position at a place called Eden. Eve had not taken time to read the fine writing micro printed on the rind of the fruit she consumed in violation of her terms of stewardship. Adam had known, but chose to join Eve in Sin’s employ because he could not bear to think of living in paradise without his wife. Now every human born of the seed of Adam belonged to Sin, to be abused and slaughtered at Sin’s whim. There was nothing the Ancient of Days could do about that unless He compromised the perfect justice and unwavering ethics that defined His very essence.

That should have been reassuring to the minions, but their nagging premonition of doom would not be silenced. Something was wrong with this situation—this baby born of a woman—this tiny infant conceived without man under the personal germinating, life-spawning power of The Creator—it all smelled suspicious. They squirmed uncomfortably at the concept of an incorruptible human. Since Adam had fallen, no man who lived had been excluded from generational, inherited slavery as Sin’s chattel. What could He possibly hope to accomplish?

As ancient as their evil was, as cunning as their diabolical genius ran, as complex as their stratagems wove, they were baffled. The masterminds of treachery who had invented the techniques of blackmail, extortion, torture, betrayal, subterfuge, seduction, bribery, and terror could not comprehend the obvious truth. They could not comprehend it, because true love and selflessness and humility and sacrifice were concepts that their depraved minds were incapable of processing.

The truth was that this child was no seed of Adam. Therefore, if Sin killed Him, the contract for the souls of men would be cancelled. Any man or woman who believed in and accepted His substitutionary atonement would be set free. Their contract would be broken, their debt paid, their lawbreaking pardoned. However the plan required the unthinkable. It required the selfless, voluntary sacrifice of a sinless human. In Hell’s rage and blindness it was going to kill this human, and in so doing would initiate the collapse of its own empire.

Suddenly, a brilliant point of silver fire winked into view in the night sky above the rolling pastureland just north of Bethlehem. Shepherds, nodding by their small dung-fueled fire, stirred and pointed with curiosity. The light grew larger until it became evident that it was a rapidly moving object and that its trajectory would drop it into the field in which the lay. Fear began to grip them. Was this a falling star--an omen, perhaps, of death or tragedy?

The thought had no sooner formulated than they were able to make out a human-like figure at the center of the light. Terror-stricken, they cried out and cast themselves to the ground. But the angel reassured them, "Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger."

Just as the shepherds began to lift their faces from the earth, a tremulous smile of hope surging to their lips, the dome of heaven ripped apart from horizon to horizon like a rotten curtain! Angels began cascaded through! Millions and millions in rank upon shimmering rank, riding blinding rays of light that hurled the shepherds back to the ground and sucked the air from their lungs. The lurking minions of Sin squalled in agony, covering their ears and groveling with horror. “Leave us!” They screamed, “We will not touch the child this night! The guard you have posted is sufficient!”

But the vast angelic horde did not as much as acknowledge the minions’ presence. Still they continued to pour into the sky in successive tiers of upswept wings and flowing radiant tunics until the atmosphere could no longer hold them and burst, spewing a swath of light like a gigantic solar flare out into distant space as far as the shepherds could see. Then the angelic choir began to sing.

“Sing” is such an inadequate word! The complexity of that musical composition would make Mozart’s greatest work sound like a three year old trying to play Chopsticks on an out-of-tune piano. The power of the chorus compelled the stars as far away as the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy to dance. The bass parts plunged deeper than the call of a humpback whale and the soprano soared higher than the twittering of the cedar waxwing. Yet as profound as the music was, the lyrics were simple: “Glory to God in the highest and Peace to His people on Earth!”

Hallelujah! The promised Prince of Peace visited a despairing world that first Christmas night. Wrapped in the tender cloak of infant flesh, He had at last arrived to crush the Serpent’s head! Now and forevermore He is to all men everywhere our rescuer, our debt consolidator, our emancipator, our joy and our only hope for eternal life.

As the ancient prophet had predicted, “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” In addition, this writer humbly yet proudly confesses that the baby who was born to a Judean virgin on that First Christmas is today my closest and most trusted friend. It is in His name that I sincerely wish all my readers and their loved ones a blessed Christmas!
 

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