I love children's Christmas pageants. I love the chaos, the crowns, the halos and the angel wings. I love watching the littlest kids, the ones who are almost always the sheep or the shepherds of the multitude of heavenly hosts.
Maybe I've seen a hundred Christmas pageants in my ministry, often two or three a year. Sure, the kids touch our hearts with their little voices, missed cues and their vulnerability. But I think I love these pageants because somehow children best proclaim the humility of God. Somehow they best capture and convey the story of the God of the whole universe becoming a small child.
Our human world, with its pride and fascination with the fulfillment of our desires, so desperately needs to hear this message of humility. My prayer for all of us during this Christmas season is that we might come before the manger with our littlest brothers and sisters in Christ and truly receive the message of God's humility and then bear it forth.
The Rt. Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE
Christmas 2010