Christmas, Disappointments, and Technical Detail

All five kids were home for Christmas. We had a good time. Decided not to travel.

Cleaning up after breakfast on Christmas morning, Jenny (My youngest- 16 ys. ) was hanging around. She was pretty happy. Somehow we got talking about friends in different situations. We got talking about scripture and how I think that, for Mary, the first Christmas was probably full of disappointments if you imagine yourself in her shoes. Maybe it's a mom thing, and I confess I was reading between the lines.

Run your imagination with me...Pregnant out of wedlock. Ready to deliver your first baby any day and your husband tells you that you both have to march off to Bethlehem on foot and on a donkey's back, a four day journey, to stand in a government waiting line. You get there, all the rooms are taken, you've no place to stay. So you stay in a smelly barn with a bunch of farm animals and creepy crawly night things and night noises. Where did they get water for clean up? You think you're carrying a special baby from God and this is what you get?

Then smelly scruffy strangers come by to peer at your baby telling you stories about light and angels. Hospitality is big in the Middle East but they might even be bringing their dogs and their sheep. What does she have to feed them?

Then these rich dudes from another country come with expensive gifts but Mary and Joseph are poor. What are they going to do with these? How do they get them safely home? Do they sell them, save them, hide them? What if someone thinks they stole them?

Then the dream. Instead of going home to job and family with their new son they have to run away and hide in another country where they probably have no job or family. Then to have news of the infanticide in Bethlehem? To think it was all their fault?

Disappointments. Mary probably had a better attitude than I would have... I said to Jenny, sometimes it's interesting to notice the things that aren't there when you read scripture.

But she said, why do churches white wash things for kids? (referring to other churches.) We talked alittle about the medical side of the crucifixion adding a different perspective and about the movie "The Passion" and a book by Phillip Keller about a shepherd looking at the 23rd Psalm and how he understands different things than people who aren't shepherds. My dad was a dairy farmer. He used to say that sheep are among the most stupid animals on the earth. :)

We talked about how people see things differently and that maybe there are reasons why God leaves out the details that He leaves out. Maybe He was intentionally giving us room to wonder and imagine so we could see more. It was neat. She doesn't think she has much of a visual imagination. But she really wanted to see more. She wanted more technical information.

She was funny. She said, "Let the little kids stay in worship but there should be a class like this for teens during worship, she said. Then we could go back to worship and understand more." LOL! You thought I was radical!

I guess it's common knowledge that teens want the truth. They want to hear the "technical detail". But it was interesting. Jenny's not one of my insatiable readers (fiction or NF). She's more the artist/inventor. I don't think of her being someone who's into "technical detail." But apparently, she is.