A Baby's Cry

Now that is a sound that touches the deepest part of the human soul, doesn't it? I mean, every one of eight billion people on the planet has that moment in common. This is Dick Foth with stories from the road. I've heard that sound, the cry of a newborn, scores of times in my life, four times, from our own newborns. And by definition, that cry is described as vociferous, shrill piercing, the infant is signaling that a new and separate life has begun. Separated from the body of the mother cries for care and support protection, all those things. Well, think about it. It's been a nine month journey from conception, starting with cell division, getting to that place a few months in where the child hears the mother's heartbeat and then the mother's voice, but it's constant separation and multiplication of cells that create bones and muscle and tissue and blood vessels and brain cells and organs and eyes and ears and mouth and nose and figures and toes and it goes on and on and on. I mean, unbelievable, I think, is to tame a word to describe the miracle of birth and when you hear that cry, in some places, you also hear this. I was in a hospital the other day and as I walked out, this song started playing, Johan Brahms back in the day, a couple of hundred years back, wrote that melody. I think in German, it means good and obend, good and not, good evening and good night and it's come to be known as Brahms Lullaby and hospitals across this country. Many hospitals play that when a child is born. There are some places in the world where Brahms is not played at the moment. Eastern Ukraine, for example, a child's birth is more than likely to be accompanied by air raid sirens. Some folks have said, because of the trauma going on in the world, we don't know if we want to have children to bring them into this kind of world. Frankly, that's not a terrible sentiment in my book in this sense. Who wants to bring their child into a place of suffering, right? But depending on your exact place on the planet, hasn't it always been so? In her article, A Vision of Peace by Carolyn Arens or Arens, she makes this observation. In 2003, the journalist Chris Hedges set out to discover whether there have been any sustained periods of peace in the human record. He defined war as any active conflict that has claimed more than a thousand lives. So he reviewed 3400 years of human history and discovered just 248 war-free years. Think of it. 92% of human history is marked by active conflict. People in the Middle East, in Jesus' day, didn't need a study to know that. What they needed was a profit to bring good news. Here they were, in a setting with a foreign power in charge, had been dominant there for 100 years. And Isaiah 700 years before Jesus of Nazareth was born. Set it this way, speaking God-speaking to Israel, and Isaiah is, if you will, his conduit or mouthpiece. Isaiah 96 through 7 says this, for to us a child is born, to us a son is given. And the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called a wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, prince of peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace, there will be no end. He'll reign on David's throne and over his kingdom establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. You know how it is, at least those of you who are parents or siblings even. The birth of a baby changes a lot, but the birth of this baby described in Isaiah the night chapter changes everything. I mean, think about it. How would a regular king come? Even when I say a regular king, that sounds like an oxymoron. Two words go together, but you get what I'm saying. Not someone like me who is just, I'm a commoner. I don't, I'm not in the royal line, my people have not had that kind of history. But I admit, not in my wildest dreams could I have come up with this idea. He Stanley Jones, the missionary for 35 years in India, and well respected among a lot of the leadership of that country, wrote in one of his books, The World Longs for a New Leader in a New World Order, and they find both in Jesus of Nazareth. What I love about what we call the Christmas story or the birth of Jesus of Nazareth is that he comes just like us. I mean, think about it. The creator king of the universe identifies with our first trauma. Here we are in that watery, womb world, comfortable, and all of a sudden there's pressure. And within, I don't know, sometimes it's moment, sometimes it's ours. We find ourselves out in the world of the giants with bright lights, talking funny languages. The creator king of the universe makes himself totally vulnerable. The writer Luke records in the second chapter of his narrative about Jesus of Nazareth. In those days, he's a Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. This was the first census that took place while Crenius was governor of Syria. And everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea to Bethlehem, the town of David. Because he belonged to the house in line of David. He went there to register with Mary who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger because there was no guest room available for them. When you read that along with the other accounts of Jesus' birth, here is a baby born into a setting where a foreign power is in charge. And it's a brutal foreign power to an unmarried teen mother getting there some 90 miles or more by road and dangerous times out in the elements. They get to Bethlehem where he is born. There's no security there. And it's just it's amazing how vulnerable this creator king makes himself to I think identify with us. I mean, I can't talk about that. I can't talk about a child being born without remembering being a dad of four young children. Now they're all adult. They have children, some grandchildren of their own. But it was years ago when the four children were small and Ruth and I lived in Urbana, Illinois. And I came home that day from work and it was back in the day of three peace suits. Some of you, if you're older, would remember polyester suits, Swedish knit polyester suits. Okay, in the winter, but they kill you in the summer. And I came in and I tossed my briefcase over on the couch and sort of fell face down on the front room floor because even though I was in my early 30s, I'd been working hard and I was tired. Well, if you do that with teenage children and you know this, you do that with teenage kids, you know, the young man walks into the kitchen and says, hey, mom, dad's sort of weirded out. Maybe you need to check him out or call some of your son. But if you have little children and you fall face down on the front room floor, sir, what happens? Well, they pile on you because the giant has laid down. I'm six feet tall. That's about two and a half times taller than a preschooler. And when you lay down, they just jump on you and they're sitting on your head and they're checking your pockets. And so we started rough housing as we said back in the day and we played games. And of course, that's what is happening at Bethlehem. Is that God, the giant lies down so I can touch him. Vertical power goes horizontal so I have access. I don't need to be afraid. The thought that I had about this years ago that I continued to really relish is that he starts with my person. He doesn't start with my issues. He says, both, let me show you what a perfect person looks like. And when I identify with him, as he's reached out to identify with me, then over time as I follow him, he takes me to a place where he confronts my issues. If you start with a person's issues, you rarely get to the person. But if you start with my person over time, we can deal with my issues. So what comes with this baby? Well, his name is Yeshua, Jesus, the one who delivers, but it's also in manual, God with us. You get the promise of glory, of joy, of justice, of hope, and peace. He is called the Prince of Peace, what a fascinating title. I don't know anywhere in our world who doesn't in their deepest heart of hearts desire peace, not just for themselves, but for those around them for families, for their culture. Beth Stovall, who is an author, writer. In a work put out by Christianity today called the Promise One, its Advent readings, says this about peace. Isaiah and Matthew knew what it means that Jesus is the Prince of Peace. When Matthew described Jesus as fulfilling Isaiah, we see the image of Shalom, the Hebrew word for peace. Unlike our often narrow understanding of peace is simply being without war. Shalom encompasses a broad picture of how God makes everything wrong with the world right. This Shalom of God is a peace that brings order out of chaos and justice in place of injustice. The King of Creation comes in our way with our needs. There is a time to be born, a time to suffer, a time to die. And in the cry of that baby on that Middle Eastern night, he brought eternity into time. Our world could and would never be the same. In centuries to follow, this season, what we're in now, when we celebrate that one of a kind birth would be called Advent, the coming hint. It was the first of two, apparently there's another one down the road. But that's it for this podcast. Think of it. The Prince of Peace, King of the Universe, come in baby shape. Thanks for listening, subscribing. We'll be back soon with part two of these Advent series. But as we go out, as we leave this podcast, as we wrap it up, let's hear the music that surrounds that royal baby one more time. God bless, catch you. God bless.