The First Noel

Parking lots are filled to overflowing…

Noisy shoppers hustle lines to jockey for position…

Misshapen cookies are baked, sprinkled, devoured…

It is Christmas.

Carols on the radio remind me of the first Noel…

My random ponderings make me wonder what a Noel is…

I can not find a meaning for the word Noel in the dictionary.  I mean, I know we think of Noel as synonymous with Christmas, but its’ Latin roots say the word actually means birthday. It was a French surname long before it became associated with Christmas day.  That’s fine with me…it just makes me think of that city, that manger, that mother, that child.

Mary and Joseph were on a mission…get to Bethlehem in time.  I think of the terrain of the Middle East, and realize it could not have been an easy journey.  Painful, back-breaking steps for a mother in the final days of pregnancy, perhaps even early labor.

Turned away from comfort at the inn, offered merely the same protection given to livestock in a rustic desert dwelling.

Sometime in mid December...December 25th has become the declared date but scholars persist in debating the exact day, hour, moment...when a sovereign, omnipotent God brought a helpless babe into the world, our world. 

Jesus was born to a mother whom he desperately needed.  She birthed her Immanuel, nurtured him, fed him, cared for him.  He needed her.  This is the first time I’ve thought of Jesus as being needy.  Mary and her husband, Joseph, charged with meeting all of the needs of the Prince of Peace,  King of Kings, Lord of Lords.  That’s kind of overwhelming to me.  The world, you and me, Mary and Joseph…we were given this gift in the form of a helpless infant.    

The story of Jesus’s birth awakens every sense in me…I can picture the stable, and a weary couple trying to find a place to rest.  I can smell the wet straw, the animal sweat, the earthy scent of a stable floor.  I can hear the silence of the night, a canopy of stars shining overhead, soundless and bright.  I can taste the salt of Mary’s tears as she must have wept, in worry and then in painful gratitude as Jesus was born.  And I can hold Him…I can imagine the feel of Jesus, wrapped in rough cloth and pressed tight against my chest, resting in my arms.  Any mother who has known childbirth knows what it is like to hold an infant seconds after birth.  Nothing matches a mother's love. And yet...here is a babe who will one day surrender His life for his mother, for my mother, for your mother, for me...

How precious is that scene to me…that first Christmas, the first Noel.

The baby who needed his mother will become the Saviour of the world.  

But for now, let us be still.  Let us imagine the manger, no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus laying down his sweet head.  Let us wonder about the stars in the sky as they looked down where he lay...let us behold the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.  

Let us hold Him, let us love Him...

Oh come, let us adore Him.