There’s a story which I love to remember during the twelve days of Christmas simply because Christmas is the time to remember just how much promise arrives in the form of a newborn baby. I first heard this story from a very wise seminary professor and since then I’ have heard Marcus Borg and Parker Palmer tell it. I’m not sure that this story actually happened, but I am absolutely sure that this story is one-hundred percent true!
It’s a story about a three-year-old girl who was the only child in her family, when her parents announce that they are having a baby. The little girl is excited by the prospect of having a new baby sister or brother. Now, it seemed to the little girl like it was taking for ever, but eventually the day comes when her Mom and Dad go off to the hospital for the birth. When her parents arrive home with her new baby brother, the little girl is simply delighted. They hadn’t been home for more than a couple of hours, when the little girl tells her parents that she wants to spend some time with the new baby, in the baby’s room, alone, with the door shut. She’s absolutely insistent about the door being shut.
Her parents are none too sure about this idea of leaving their precious new bundle alone with their three-year-old daughter. They know she is a good little girl, but they’ve heard about sibling rivalry and they’re not too sure about taking this risk. As they were debating the idea, they remember that they’ve recently installed an intercom system in preparation for the arrival of the new baby. They realize that they can let their little girl have her wish, and if they hear the slightest strange thing happening, they can be in there in a flash to rescue their newborn. So, they let their little girl go into the room alone. They close the door behind her. They race to the listening post. They hear her footsteps move across the room. They imagine their little girl standing over their baby’s crib, and then they hear her say to her two-day-old baby brother, “Tell me about God. I have almost forgotten.”
At Christmas, we are, all of us, that child, standing over the baby’s crib hoping against hope that the newborn baby will tell us about God; maybe because we have almost forgotten, maybe because we don’t believe, maybe because we want to believe, maybe because we’ve lost hope, maybe because we are endlessly curious, or maybe simply because T’s the season for hoping against hope that the child will tell us about the MYSTERY which we call God, because we have almost forgotten.