This isn’t a picture of Jesus.

I don’t think you can get one of those….except maybe in your mind….maybe in your heart.

Photography wasn’t big back then.

Sparrow was up last night….goofing around.

She wasn’t crying unless we tried to get her to stop goofing around.

These babies….they have no respect for the sanctity of the idea of sleeping in until 6:00 on Christmas day.

They don’t respect exhaustion.

What was that first morning like for Mary?

You know that she was tired….it was probably a pretty stressful experience for her, what with those wise men poking their heads in and the Angels and everything.

That must have been kind of hard.

Divine….but hard.

And did Jesus cry out for her that first morning?

We don’t usually talk about that, I guess.

Maybe it’s a way of distancing ourselves from the whole thing a little….go heavy on the “miracle” part of it….the part that we can’t completely relate to (what do we really know about “miracles”, anyway?)….and go a little bit lighter on the human side of it.

If we understood the human side of the experience as well as we pretend to know the “divine side”, it might make us more….what’s a word? Culpable? Responsible? What’s a good word?

If the whole thing was “connectable”…if we let ourselves remember that Jesus was the bridge….a very human little baby laying in a rough manger after a hard night….laying near his very tired and blessed mother….well, then we’d have to relate a little deeper than when we could think of it all as just another mysterious and unreachable “God Thing”.

I think that Jesus probably cried some….in a nice way.

What a mysterious miracle this day was.

I guess that maybe what I’m wondering is this….if we understood what the experience really was for Mary…and Jesus….and Joseph….we’d have no excuse for not understanding completely….every day….how close this brought us to God.

No excuses. We’d have to understand. We’d have to relate.

Who wants to be left without excuses?

A giant neon plastic nativity set is easier to ignore.