In our home we have a simple yet beautiful nativity set made of hand-painted wooden pegs.  Although our (my?  Anne probably had a better vision all along) initial intent was to create a nice little nativity display for our children to “look at but not touch,” you can probably imagine that these little wooden characters have quickly become one of the new favorite toys of the season, especially for our 2 1/2 year-old Alice.

To be honest, I was initially annoyed by finding shepherds under tables and Joseph in the bathroom, and Eleanor, our 10-month-old, could not keep the spherically-shaped sheep out of her mouth.  And who knew how much angels loved talking to Thomas the Train?

At this point in the story I could talk about how I was eventually convicted by the metaphor for faith that was made painfully obvious to me yesterday:  that we adults, we like to put the story of Jesus on a shelf, to “look at but not touch,” so that we are “reminded of God’s Truth” when we happen to glance over at the display from time to time.  Children, however, are natural integrators of faith.  They are all-in.  The characters of Jesus’ story become regular players in their world, the story of Jesus is wrapped around and through the entire tapestry of their imagination.  Why wouldn’t an angel talk to a train?  “The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these . . . ”

But that’s another post.

What I want to talk about this morning is what happened two nights ago, when the little wooden Baby Jesus could not be found.  Anne and I were finishing a dinner conversation, and from the next room we could hear Alice walking around saying, “Baby Jesus, where are you?”  A few minutes later we heard, “There you go, Mommy, there’s Baby Jesus.”  And what we found in the adjacent room is pictured at the top of this post.  Alice had searched and searched for the wooden Baby Jesus to no avail, so she found the picture of the manger scene in her Jesus Storybook Bible and placed Mary (Mommy) right on top of the two-dimensional Mary on the page, and positioned her looking directly at her baby.

At the time Anne and I thought this little act was incredibly cute and special and meaningful, but the true meaning didn’t well up within me until last night at church when Anne and I sang along with our congregation, “O Come Let Us Adore Him.”

Adoration.  An often ethereal posture in my faith, I must confess.  Sure, I love Jesus, but how often do I put myself in a posture of adoration?  Do I come to adore Him, or to plead with Him, ask of Him, bargain with Him?

But Alice gets it.  She knew that Mary needed to be adoring the Baby Jesus.  And once she placed Mary in that posture, she left her alone.  The wooden Mary sat on the book adoring the two-dimensional Baby Jesus the rest of the evening (until Eleanor came along).  It’s as if Alice knew that Mary was now at peace.  “There you go, Mommy.  There’s Baby Jesus.”

Good friends, come!  Let us adore Him!