The Baby Changed Everything

There is a wonderful story by Bret Harte called THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.  Roaring camp was supposed to be the meanest, toughest mining town in all the west.  More murders, more thefts---it was a terrible place inhabited entirely by men, and one woman who tried to serve them all.  Her name was Cherokee Sal.  She died while giving birth to a baby.  Well, the men took the baby, and they put her in a box with some old rags under her.  When they looked at her, they decided that didn't look right, so they sent one of the men eighty miles to buy a rosewood cradle.  He brought it back, and they put the rags and the baby in the rosewood cradle.  And the rags didn't look right there.  So they sent another of their number to Sacramento, and he came back with some beautiful silk and lace blankets.  And they put the baby, wrapped around with those blankets into the cradle.  It looked fine until someone happened to notice that the floor was so filthy.  So these hardened, tough men got down on their hands and knees, and with their hardened and callused hands they scrubbed that floor until it was very clean.  Of course, what that did was to make the walls and the ceiling and the dirty windows without curtains look absolutely terrible.  So they washed down the walls and the ceiling, and they put curtains on the windows.  And now things were beginning to look as they thought they should.  But of course, they had to give up a lot of their fighting, because the baby slept a lot, and babies can't sleep during a brawl.  So the whole temperature of the Roaring Camp seemed to go down.  They used to take her out and set her by the entrance to the mine in her rosewood cradle so they could see her when they came up. Then somebody noticed what a dirty place that was, so they planted flowers, and they made a very nice garden there.  It looked quite beautiful.  And they would bring her, oh, shiny little stones and things they would find in the mine.  But when they would put their hands down next to hers. their hands looked so dirty.  Pretty soon the general store was all sold out of soap and shaving gear and perfume and those kinds of things...for you see, the baby changed everything.

Those of us who have had the gift of a baby know the changes that can bring, but nothing like the changes Bethlehem's baby brought to our world and lives.  For when that baby comes into your life, he slips into every crack and crevice.  He touches every part of our lives.  He washes us clean and makes us new.  He reaches down deep and draws us close to our Heavenly Father.  For from the manger is fashioned a cross of punishment for sin--ours.  That cute little baby of Bethlehem died one day 33 years later--and that changed everything.

Silence

“Without the practice of silence…. spiritual disciplines will become objects we employ in an attempt to produce our own transformation or in an attempt to manipulate God to bring about the changes we have decided are needed, or in an attempt to impress (and thereby control) others with our spirituality.  The practice of silence is the radical reversal of our cultural tendencies.  Silence is bringing ourselves to a point of relinquishing to God our control of our relationship with God.  Silence is a reversal of the whole possessing, controlling, grasping dynamic of trying to maintain control of our own existence.  Silence is the inner act of” letting it go.” 

Through prayer “God will gradually awaken us to the multiple layers of controlling, grasping ‘noise’ in our lives: the defensive postures by which we justify our control of people and circumstances; the attack dynamics by which we extend and maintain our possession and control of others and our world; the indulgent habits by which we grasp things and others for ourselves; the manipulative practices by which we inflict our will on the world; and especially the ways in which we attempt to use God to support and justify these structures.”

(Robert Mulholland, “Invitation To A Journey,” InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 1993, pp. 136-137)

Questions

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The older I get the more questions I have.  I’ve noticed that children go through a time when they drive their parents nuts with “why” questions.   Teenagers can’t figure out why they have all the answers and their parents don’t have any.  College graduates enter the work world sure of their answers, at least that’s the image they portray.  I remember I left the seminary with all the answers to questions no one was asking.  It didn’t take long for all of those answers to be tested.

There really are only a few questions that matter in the total scheme of life.  “Where did I come from?’  “Who am I?”  “Who is God?”  and  “Where am I going?”  Every philosophy and religion tries to answer these.  All come up short because there is only One who has the answers, and that is Jesus.  He is the “way, the truth, and the life.”  He tells us that we are “beloved children of a loving God, who made us and will take us to be with Himself one day.”  That’s it!  These things are sure.  So my questions may multiply as the length of my life shortens, but the answers that really matter are rock solid and will take me straight into eternity with Him.