Friends, this Christmas season, as we rightly contemplate the vulnerability and humility of Jesus as a baby, let us also remember that the baby grew up, and that this Jesus never saw Himself as above or beyond the regular rites of passage and seasons of development that it takes to become an adult, and that He went through it all in obedience and humility. 

I love how earthy and human and gritty the Christmas story is. It takes the seemingly abstract notion of an eternal creator and injects Him into the dirt of the world that He made.