All Because of a Child

Baby Jesus

In the book, Silas Marner, written by George Eliot, Silas is a miser whose gold gets stolen. He’s desolate until he comes home one night, sees what he thinks is his gold on the floor of his hut. He bends down to grasp the money in his hand-”but instead of hard coin he felt soft curls.” It was a child, a girl, lost and alone, and she changed everything.”

Eliot goes on to write, “He had a dreamy feeling that this child was somehow a message come to him from a far-off life; it stirred old quiverings of tenderness, old impressions of awe at the presentiment of some power presiding over his life. We older human beings feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in earth or sky.

“Marner took the little girl on his lap, trembling with an emotion mysterious to himself, at something unknown dawning on his life. He could only have said that the child was come instead of the gold-that the gold had turned into this child. This child, whom he named Eppie, loved sunshine, sounds, and every other thing in God’s world. The gold had asked that he should sit weaving longer and longer, deafened to all things except the monotony of his loom; but Eppie called him away from his weaving, and made him think all its pauses a holiday, reawakening his senses that her fresh life, warming him into joy because she had joy.”

Many people spend their whole life seeking wealth or fame. But, like Silas Marner, what we really need to seek is a child-the Christ child. Could it not merely be that the coming of a child gives us joy, but that we actually give God this sort of delight? Could we believe that God, instead of being a far off, distant God who enjoys heavenly isolation, actually finds joy in “touching our curls”, hearing our laughter, and sharing our joy?

Christmas is all about the birth of our Savior-Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.” God took great delight in creating our world and God took great delight in redeeming our world-everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved because God is with us. He came to earth to save His people from their sins and God did this by becoming one of us, Jesus, so that one day, we could be freed from all that binds us to this world.

I wish you all a very blessed and joyous Christmas! Celebrate the fact that God came down from heaven as a little baby, born of an unwed teenage mother, so that we might be saved.

Thanks be to God!

Yours in Christ,

Pastor Sue Beadle

“Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall name him Emmanuel-which means ‘God is with us.”