Excerpt from Max Lucado's God Came Near
God. O infant-God. Heaven's fairest child. Conceived by the union of divine grace with our disgrace. Sleep Well...
Rest well, tiny hands. For though you belong to a king, you will touch no satin, own no gold. You will grasp no pen, guide no brush. No, your tiny hands are reserved for works more precious:
to touch a leper's open wound,
to wipe a widow's weary tear,
to claw the ground of Gethsemane.
Your hands, so tiny, so tender, so white-clutched tonight in an infant's fist. They aren't destined to hold a scepter nor wave from a palace balcony. They are reserved instead for a Roman spike that will staple them to a Roman cross.
Sleep deeply, tiny eyes. Sleep while you can. For soon the blurriness will clear and you will see the mess we have made of your world...
Rosebud lips - upon which ride a starborn kiss of forgiveness to those who believe you, and of death to those who deny you - lay still.
And tiny feet cupped in the palm of my hand, rest. For many difficult steps lie ahead for you...
I read this the other night and it really struck me, likely because every description of an infant is very real to me right now. I couldn't keep from wondering what it would be like to be holding a new baby, knowing that I was going to have to see him be ridiculed and torchured and killed. That is a weight that seems almost impossible to bear.
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