Child

Today’s #AdventWord is #Child

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Traditional icons of the Holy Mother and Child often depict Jesus in a very adult form. Icons are not, primarily, paintings to look at, but windows through which we gaze upon mystery. Though Jesus came as a baby, that child contained within itself the potential to become an adult, married with children of his own. That child contained the potential to become a wise and wizened old man. Jesus fulfilled neither of these potentials. Yet there were other things, contained within that baby laid in a manger, that he did fulfil: the potential to point people to God; the potential to bring healing and restoration to community to the weak and excluded; the potential to share love within a family; the potential to inspire others by the manner of his living, and by the manner of his dying...

Every child carries within herself her beginning and her end—and all the potential that will be fulfilled, and all the potential that will be frustrated, between those two points. Every child is an icon, a window onto holy mystery, written by God.