Derailed Thoughts

One thought at Christmas has always impressed me the most–the thought of the selflessness of the birth of Christ. I am amazed what the savior was willing to give up to come down here and to help me. I think Tad Callister says it best in “The Infinite Atonement”:

That night, God the Son traded His heavenly home with all its celestial adornments for a mortal abode with all its primitive trappings. He, “the King of heaven” (Alma 5:50), “the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth” (Mosiah 3:5), left a throne to inherit a manger. He exchanged the dominion of a god for the dependence of a babe. He gave up wealth, power, dominion, and the fulness of his glory–for what?–for taunting, mocking, humiliation, and subjection. It was a trade of unparalleled dimension, a condescension of incredible proportions, a descent of incalculable depth. And so, the great Jehovah, creator of worlds without number, infinite in virtue and power, made His entry into this world in swaddling clothes and a manger. (pg 64)

He didn’t have to come… He’d already accomplished what we are here to do. Christ had somehow achieved in the premortal realms a state of omnicience and omnipotence, with no need of this sometimes difficult and painful experience of mortality. But He did come; how much more a difficult and painful journey it would be for Him than for us.

Did He remember His sacred mission as He lay there between His mortal parents, or did the veil of forgetfulness allow Him a few years of peace, unburdened by what lay ahead?

Did He know that the world around Him, the stars above him were crafted by His own tiny hands? That He, inside a tiny and helpless mortal body, was yet the creator of the universe, the Lord Omnipotent?

Some time ago, pondering this last thought made “Away in a Manger” my favorite Christmas hymn. There’s a line in that sacred music that has always brought to me a feeling mixed of wonder, irony, and helpless gratitude:

The stars in the heavens looked down where He lay,
The little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay.