He started out as a baby

without self-awareness –

the great I AM –

and needing to put the pieces together

as he grew, to figure out his purpose

and learn about his Father.

 

He needed to learn a skill and trade

and work in the context of difficult

family relationships.

He began each day with no awareness

of what that day would bring, or where

it would take him.

 

He needed to learn how to surrender

his human will to the will of God

and then

how to keep doing it day after day

in the context of an ordinary life –

a tradesman in a nowhere town

among a people beaten down.

 

He needed to learn

to see God

with human eyes

and live for God, with God

in a human life.

 

The Jesus we saw at the end –

his few short years of publicity

and long hours of pain on a cross

was the final result – He learned

how to live God’s life

as a human.

 

Which is what we need to learn,

and at Christmas, when we try to remember

a long ago event in a faraway place

and to somehow piece it together with our

ordinary lives – so that it has the meaning

we know it should have –

 

We can remind ourselves

that he learned, and he knows

how to learn

and how to teach us,

and that though for us it is long ago

and far away

it is not for him.

 

To God, whose mind

is never dimmed by time,

the experience of being human

is fresh and vivid and utterly now.

 

He is still learning

as a master learns,

for and with each one of us

how to live his life

in ours.