Is there anything more exciting than the news of a baby being born?

As I am typing this, my sister-in-law is in labor.  She’s having baby number three today.  I have checked my phone every five minutes for the last hour just waiting for the call or text to announce her arrival.  Although the days leading up to the delivery have been long and hard for her (chasing a three-year-old and one-and-a-half-year-old around the house while maneuvering a protruding belly and holding down a full-time job), I know that the minute the baby arrives she will gaze into that sweet face and everything else will melt away.

Why?  Because babies are a celebration of life, love, and new beginnings.  They signal a new chapter about to be written in the family’s story.  They usher in a sense of awe, gratefulness, and hope.  Babies are the culmination of creation, pointing us back to our ultimate Creator.  There is something so perfect about a newborn.  New life has a way of rallying us all together to celebrate, connecting our hearts and our lives in a powerfully unique way.

And so it was for the shepherds who found their way to baby Jesus all those years ago.  The setting looked a bit different than our modern-day hospital rooms and birthing centers, but the palpable excitement that settled over that stable was undeniable.  THIS good news, THIS new life, was not just for a few gathered around the manger, but was instead for all mankind, for all eternity.  It was for you.  For me.  For every person that is yet to be.

Baby Jesus was the good news that would bring great joy for all the people! This baby wrapped up in swaddling clothes would usher in a thrill of hope like nothing the world had ever seen or heard before.  I can’t help but believe that the shepherds, as they shared in the celebration, began to feel something give way: in their hearts, in their lives, in the very air that they were breathing.  An expectancy, an anticipation, a feeling that somehow this was what they had been waiting for their entire lives.  A feeling that something was about to shift and, with it, the potential to change not only their lives but also the lives of every generation to come.  Our salvation, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

A prayer: Father, pervade our hearts with the same expectancy that the shepherds felt all those years ago.  Fill us with a thrill of hope for all that YOu are and all that You have yet planned for us.  Today we believe again for the dreams You have placed inside of us.  God, help us learn to trust Your heart and to trust Your timing.  Thank you Father, that You were then and You are still, our good news.  Amen.