Several years ago, while on a writing assignment in Chiang Mai, Thailand, I visited an international church during the Advent season. Although the graceful palm trees, deep pink bougainvilleas, and warm, if not hot, temperatures challenged my expectations of the backdrop necessary for Christmas, the story I heard that day was the very essence of the true meaning of Christmas. It was shared by a guest preacher, a missionary working among Thailand’s tribal peoples.
Shortly beforehand, the missionary had traveled to a remote district to visit contacts that had been made in earlier trips there. This time, his young son—perhaps three or four years old—had accompanied him. Unfortunately, the boy had tripped and fallen as he walked alongside his father, and the resulting cut on his face was deep and required stitches. Although the missionary quickly located a primitive medical clinic, no anesthesia was available there—only the suturing materials. Despite the awful pain he knew would be inflicted on his son, the father agreed to the procedure anyway. Without it, the lad could risk serious infection and be disfigured for life.
“Daddy! Daddy!” the little boy shrieked in pain and terror as the clinician somehow managed to stitch the wound as his father pressed his muscular torso across the boy’s body to keep him still on the examining table. “Stop! Why are you doing this to me?”
How could the father possibly explain to him so he could understand that it was out of his love for his firstborn that he was allowing the pain—even participating in it? He couldn’t. Instead, his sobs shook his bulky frame and his tears wet the boy’s soft skin beneath him.
“Oh, my son, my son,” the missionary exhaled a word with each sob.
“If you only knew how much I love you. If you could only understand that I am holding you now in love, even allowing this pain because I love you. You simply can’t understand, my beloved boy. But know this: I’ll not leave you alone in your pain,” he repeated again and again in his heart.
Even the sound of his father’s voice, intended to soothe, only seemed to antagonize the boy—when he could hear it over his wailing. “If you love me, if you care, why don’t you stop?” the screams seemed to accuse. “You could stop this all in an instant.”
So the father, out of boundless, matchless, incomprehensible, even unrequited love, silently enveloped the writhing, agonizing body of his toddler until the horrific time finally passed. It was a big chance he took on the outcome—not whether the outward scar would heal, but whether the far more painful, costly, and dangerous scars to the heart would ever mend. He couldn’t help but wonder; still his faith was even stronger than this doubt that the boy would emerge knowing, without question, the truth of the father’s never-ending love for him. And on this unshakable truth, the boy would live out all the days of his life as God had ordained each one of them to be.
“The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him ‘Immanuel’—which means ‘God with us’ (Matthew 1:23, NIV).
May you know the powerful message of Christmas this year: In love, God with us—always, forever, no matter what.
