One of the greatest privileges and biggest heartaches of being human is the opportunity to produce and nurture children. They fill our hearts with joy and cost us the most tears of any other experience in life.

Children are a sharing in the divine – an insight into the fatherhood and motherhood of God. He it is who loves us, nurtures us and weeps over us, and as parents we share in a minute manner the deep resonances of the heart of God.

As a father, there are times when I want to sweep my children up in my arms and just hold them to myself. At other times, the missed opportunity of not strangling them at birth seems a little closer to my heart. But, as a child of the King, this bittersweet experience remains one of the great privileges in life.

In this season, we remember the moment when God stepped into history and became a man. He never ceased to be God, but in clothing himself in human flesh, he became truly man – feeling our suffering, knowing our tragedy, experiencing our joy. He subjected himself to our constraints, wrapped himself in the mantle of our dust, so that he could lift us up into relationship with our heavenly father – the father who, despite the disappointment, pain and tears we cost him, loves us with a love so immense that he was willing to pay for relationship with us through the death of his own son.

‘How great the love the father has bestowed upon us that we should be called children of God!’ (1 John 3:1)
God bless!