Beyond Birth

How often do you see pictures of George Washington in swaddling clothes? When last did you see Columbus depicted in his mother's arms? Have you recently celebrated the boyhood of Marco Polo or the childhood of Lenin? The important thing about these people is not that they were children, nor that they were born. Those are foregone conclusions.

What makes them significant is what they would later do. Why then do we keep Jesus a child, in the celebration of his birth making him a baby once again, a child who for some never grows up? Why is it hard to let him climb out of the manger, and down from his mother's arms? Why don't we let him become a man, the one who lived and died and rose, the one who brought salvation? Are the aspects beyond his birth so hard to hold?