Wooed By A Baby

Our son made a tempestuous arrival into the world.  An emergency c-section at the end of hard labor would have been climactic enough. But Ethan had contracted a life-threatening virus. My new-born was rapidly whisked to a neo-natal intensive care unit an hour away…and I finally caught up with him four days later. 

But this little guy was a snuggler, and when that boy, wires, tubes and all, was finally in my arms, he pressed his little body against my neck as though he wanted to crawl inside it.  My heart was captured.  I was wooed by a baby. 

For years I have listened to a relatively familiar song on classic Christmas albums, and, somewhere below my consciousness, wondered why this song belonged to Christmas. 

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day; I would my true love did so chance

To see the legend of my play, to call my true love to my dance!

Sing! Oh, my love, oh, my love, my love, my love, This have I done for my true love.

But this year I paused to listen to the lyrics.  The next line reads, “Then was I born of virgin pure…”   And my heart caught on.  It’s Jesus calling us to his dance!   It was mostly likely written in the 15^th century when the movement of planets was called “the music of the spheres,” and everything to everything else, and all of life was a dance.  

And this Christmas, I simultaneously hear a faint echo of that earlier understanding, even as I ponder the current conversation of life within the Trinity—a self-giving love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit that spilled forth to call back a broken creation into the dance of love. 

This Christmas we are beckoned to the regal dance of the one who is the most excellent of men with grace that pours from his lips (Ps. 45:2) . We are enticed to the joyful dance of the Lord our God who “rejoices over us with gladness” (Zeph3:17).  We are wooed to our strong partner who “is able to keep us from stumbling and to present us blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” (Jude 24).

There once was a baby who came to draw the whole world to himself.  Oh come, let us adore him.