Have you ever thought about Jesus as a child? Have you ever thought about what it means to grow up as a child of God?

I find that in my heart, and sometimes in conversation with others that we almost dismiss Jesus’ days as a child. Perhaps we think they were easier because He was the Son of God. But just as Andrew Peterson points out in “Labor of Love”, “It was not a silent night, there was blood on the ground…”  This is a great mystery of how God could be contained in the smallness of our earthen vessel. I am pondering today about the beauty of childlike wonder.

Did Jesus stop and stare at the wonders of nature that He had spoken into existence? Did He get excited, scared, bored, disappointed even? When He Himself is the answer to all of these?

I am beginning to realize the oxymoron is purposeful: Child of God. Jesus came to show us how to do life as Children of God. “…to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—” John 1:12 Crazy notion isn’t it?  We are children of God.

Through one babe “born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God, (John 1:13) we have been brought into the arms of the everlasting Father.  Ponder this in your heart. When Jesus told Nicodemus that he must become like a little child, He knew what He was talking about.

Jesus knew full well what it meant to be “like a little child.”  To giggle, to be giddy, to trust, to believe. To wonder. To receive the glory of God.

Want a Christmas prayer today? Put your name, and your loved ones’ names in this sentence. “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.”