I walked His narrow streets in Bethlehem.
I climbed His steep hills in Nazareth.
My mind reeled in awe at the possibility—did I stand where His feet trod?
My God and Savior.
Did His chubby legs run in glee down dusty lanes?
Did He skip with a happy gait?
Did He play chase innocent alongside playmates in the nearby fields?
Was He bullied in childhood? Like a foreshadowing of the misery to come to come?
Or was He the popular leader-child with a following of ragamuffin friends?
When did He know His purpose? At four? At seven? At ten?
Was He ever carefree like the kids in a schoolyard playground?
As He learned the trade of His adopted father Joseph, did He mentally chafe at the mundane tasks— In light of the eternal, a golden throned realm He knew all too well?
Or did He find a modicum of peace in the use of His hands, the sweat of His brow, the aching of His shoulders? The trunk of a felled tree—smoothed and cut and worked, until beneath His fingers, it became a table.
The creation of something from near nothing.
Did it remind him of days of old? When the earth was a void and God spoke life into this watery orb for six days.
The creation of something from absolute nothing.
When did he feel the weight of a dark world? On the narrow shoulders of childhood? Or on the broader frame of youth?
I knelt in Jerusalem.
At the site they honor as the stable. The lowly place of the greatest miracle this wounded world has ever seen. Whether this is the “true” spot, matters not to me.
It was the remembrance that mattered in my heart.
The realization made fresh in this ancient town, the place my perfect God became fragile flesh for me.
He humbled himself for me.
He hoped for me.
He hung for me.
The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14