So, there’s something I’ve been wanting to write about for weeks but my schedule has not allowed me much writing time. And, though it might seem a little late now since what I wanted to write about is truly a Christmas story, it seems to me to also be the perfect other time to share it since so many people are in “love mode” this weekend. I’ve been wanting to write about a lamb, a little lamb whose arrival down here stopped me in my tracks.
When my family and I were having brunch at my favorite spot (yes, The Olde English Tea Room) just after Christmas, one of my friends there was talking with us about her family farm–the farm she and her family moved to after they left our neighborhood actually. She had told us weeks before that her mom and dad had added sheep to their farm, which thrilled me much as I have long been fascinated with this particular animal. Well, she couldn’t wait to tell me what happened on their farm Christmas morning–a little lamb was born. Yes, a little lamb was born Christmas morning on the farm of my friend and her family, a little lamb destined to be named “Noel” (the Old French word for “Christmas”). For a family of Christ-followers, well, I simply cannot think of a better gift to receive on a Christmas morning.
I just love hearing from God on any day but especially on “big” days, like when I heard from him through that new friend I made during my daughter’s double digit destination birthday and like when I heard from him through this tea room friend who told me about the birth of that little Christmas lamb. Now that I think about it, every day down here is a “big” day because every day down here is from God and he is always big indeed. God does show up here. We just don’t always “see” him or “sense” him.
Sometimes I think we have so much “sense” that we can’t see God at all. We’re just too busy trying to explain things away without him. Life down here would be so much easier if we just gave in to the fact that any and all “good” things, all things pleasant, all things pleasurable, are simply so because God is so. And, as C.S. Lewis points out, the pleasures of this life become distorted only by us and our abuse of them. Food never had to taste good, sex never had to feel good, music never had to be intoxicating, nature never had to be breathtakingly beautiful, and lambs never had to be so darn cute–except for God. All of these things, all of his creative work, is what it is because he is what and who he is–Good.
Yes, little lambs are sometimes born on Christmas morning I think because God likes to accentuate this goodness of his; and I believe he likes to do so by turning statements into exclamations. A lamb was born. A lamb was born on Christmas morning! My tea room friend told me too that, had that little lamb been a boy, its name would have been “Emmanuel/Immanuel,” which actually means “God is with us.” God is good, God is love, and God is indeed with us. He is ever-present, ever-powerful–he is everything good and then some. And nowhere is God’s goodness seen more clearly than it is in the real Lamb of God–in his Christ and our Jesus.
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