Why the Babe Always Stays

What happened last year changed everything:

I’m in the kitchen and the house is still still, and the sky’s dome’s lightening blue. Night grey blends into the warm hues of morning. A child’s voice, soft and lilting, calls from her pillow.

It’s her first waking thought, her still lying in bed.

She calls it out to the day stretching awake and to me, to her Mama that she knows is always here somewhere, always here.

“I want to see baby Jesus again.”

I smile. The kitchen’s empty. The house still drowses with night. The Christmas tree, rung with the Jesse Tree ornaments and brown paper snowflakes, still glows with lights, the memory of last night finally adding the baby Jesus to the nativity scene.





But I’m standing here in the quiet, smiling happy greeting to these words.

These first thoughts in first light. To wake wanting Jesus.

What was my first waking thought?

“You may come, Little One.”

I hear her whisper of feet, tip-toes across old planks, and then there she is, that nest of straw curls. She patters past, directly to our manger scene. She bends, drawing face close to crèche. I can’t see her eyes for wild hair.

But I hear her, words not for me, but for Him, gift of hushed adoration.

“I’m so glad You came.”

So she wakes and breaks my blithe heart.

Christmas Day has passed. Boxing Day come and gone too. Soon, to pack up all the decorations of the holy-days and the Christmas memories of another year.

But, standing in the kitchen, watching Little One kneeling before the nativity, Child pondering the incomprehensible, I decide.

I’m not boxing up the symbol of the Rescuer. The rest of the crèche will be packed away, but not the Babe in the manger, the Savior who comes to the barn to save a bestial world mired in sin and pain’s muck.

I’m too glad He’s come.

To greet the next 365 days with that same childlike delight! I want to see Jesus again!






That is why all last year, the symbol of the Babe remained quietly on a side table. I passed it every morning as I left my room. And I remembered. To wake wanting Jesus.

And when Advent began this year, we again set up the nativity... and waited till Christmas Eve before we set the Baby Jesus into the heart of the manger, the world, again.

Today ends the twelve days of Christmas. Tomorrow, some will celebrate Epiphany. And then, the world moves on, the lights come down. But does the world grow dark?

Our Jesse Tree decorations may be packed away for another year, the advent wreath on a shelf in the storage closet, the creche boxed.

But now, quietly for us, never the Babe.

The Babe has come and we want Him to always stay.

The Gift never to be boxed, returned or shelved.

He is Who I long to see everyday in this place.

Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

~John 14:23

Photos: our nativity, gift from Granny, and the symbol of the Babe that always remains out
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