The Having a baby in October has been a significant part of my Advent practice this year. 

YHWH brought peace through a baby. For those of us who are close enough to little babies and have not yet repressed our memories, this is entirely unexpected…ridiculous even. 

But we do repress these memories. 

Aside from cuteness, this, I think, is because babies bring with them a new normal. For such small people they wield much power. They completely alter any kind of normal and impose a new normal. But here we find ourselves (I use the plural pronoun loosely!): spending eight hours each day feeding the kid, getting no more than 5 hours of sleep at any time, learning how to care for a 5 and 2 year old while caring for the small one. 

This year the Coxen5 are trying to celebrate Christmastide––or the twelve days of Christmas which occur after Christmas. The season of Advent (the time leading up to Christmas) guides us in waiting for the coming of Christ. Christmastide guides us to normalize life with this baby. 

I'm thinking of Christmastide as a kind of maternity/paternity leave. Each year the church calendar gives us 12 days of FMLA . . .  


The baby has come! And now his tiny cries impose a new kind of normal. 

Are we willing to live into his interruptions and welcome the Kingdom where this baby is King?
   Whenever it comes near? Even if at 2 a.m.?
   Wherever it comes near? Even in places where we're busy doing something else?
   In whomever it comes near? Whether the significant or insignificant? 

Joy to the world,
The Lord has come!
Let earth receive her King.
Let every heart prepare him room
And heaven and nature sing

Joy to the world,
The Savior reigns
Let men their songs employ
While fields and floods
Rocks, hills and plains 
Repeat the sounding joy

The Having a baby in October has been a significant part of my Advent practice this year. 

YHWH brought peace through a baby. For those of us who are close enough to little babies and have not yet repressed our memories, this is entirely unexpected…ridiculous even. 

But we do repress these memories. 

Aside from cuteness, this, I think, is because babies bring with them a new normal. For such small people they wield much power. They completely alter any kind of normal and impose a new normal. But here we find ourselves (I use the plural pronoun loosely!): spending eight hours each day feeding the kid, getting no more than 5 hours of sleep at any time, learning how to care for a 5 and 2 year old while caring for the small one. 

This year the Coxen5 are trying to celebrate Christmastide––or the twelve days of Christmas which occur after Christmas. The season of Advent (the time leading up to Christmas) guides us in waiting for the coming of Christ. Christmastide guides us to normalize life with this baby. 

I'm thinking of Christmastide as a kind of maternity/paternity leave. Each year the church calendar gives us 12 days of FMLA . . .  


The baby has come! And now his tiny cries impose a new kind of normal. 

Are we willing to live into his interruptions and welcome the Kingdom where this baby is King?
   Whenever it comes near? Even if at 2 a.m.?
   Wherever it comes near? Even in places where we're busy doing something else?
   In whomever it comes near? Whether the significant or insignificant? 

Joy to the world,
The Lord has come!
Let earth receive her King.
Let every heart prepare him room
And heaven and nature sing

Joy to the world,
The Savior reigns
Let men their songs employ
While fields and floods
Rocks, hills and plains 
Repeat the sounding joy

A New Normal. A Christmastide Reflection.

The Having a baby in October has been a significant part of my Advent practice this year. 

YHWH brought peace through a baby. For those of us who are close enough to little babies and have not yet repressed our memories, this is entirely unexpected…ridiculous even. 

But we do repress these memories. 

Aside from cuteness, this, I think, is because babies bring with them a new normal. For such small people they wield much power. They completely alter any kind of normal and impose a new normal. But here we find ourselves (I use the plural pronoun loosely!): spending eight hours each day feeding the kid, getting no more than 5 hours of sleep at any time, learning how to care for a 5 and 2 year old while caring for the small one. 

This year the Coxen5 are trying to celebrate Christmastide––or the twelve days of Christmas which occur after Christmas. The season of Advent (the time leading up to Christmas) guides us in waiting for the coming of Christ. Christmastide guides us to normalize life with this baby. 

I'm thinking of Christmastide as a kind of maternity/paternity leave. Each year the church calendar gives us 12 days of FMLA . . .  


The baby has come! And now his tiny cries impose a new kind of normal. 

Are we willing to live into his interruptions and welcome the Kingdom where this baby is King?
   Whenever it comes near? Even if at 2 a.m.?
   Wherever it comes near? Even in places where we're busy doing something else?
   In whomever it comes near? Whether the significant or insignificant? 

Joy to the world,
The Lord has come!
Let earth receive her King.
Let every heart prepare him room
And heaven and nature sing

Joy to the world,
The Savior reigns
Let men their songs employ
While fields and floods
Rocks, hills and plains 
Repeat the sounding joy

Ridiculous. An Advent Reflection.

Having a baby in October has been a significant part of my Advent practice this year. 

We sing a lot about how peaceful the baby Jesus was. This I doubt. 

We sing a lot about how the night was silent. Seriously? Childbirth is a lot of things, but silent is not one of them.

It would be difficult to say that babies bring peace. There's so much crying. So many late nights. So much crying late at night. Some may have you believe that babies are peaceful while they're sleeping. That's true, but it's not true for very long. They only sleep a couple of hours at at time. Then they start screaming again. 

Peace? My toe.

Yet, YHWH brought peace through a baby. For those of us who are close enough to little babies and have not yet repressed our memories, this is entirely unexpected…ridiculous even. 

Are we ready for the unexpected? Have we prepared the way for the ridiculous? 

The little cries of this little one bring peace. 

Ridiculous.

Interruptions. Ain't No Interruption like a . . .

I’ve reflected already about interruptions here.

Last Tuesday I shared with my small group that the Lord has been calling me to welcome interruptions. Later that week I would have my chance. 

Ain't no interruption like the norovirus interruption
cause the norovirus interruption don't stop

The five year old woke up puking each night from Friday-Monday. He puked a good chunk *pun* of the time during the day, too. 

We spent most of these days bleaching anything and everything. 
   We did laundry. (20+ loads. At $2/load, we counted.) 
   We made several trips to the store for some sick stuff. (bleach, gloves, soup, crackers . . . ) 
   We set a timer to remind the boy to drink every 10 minutes. 
   We started and restarted Curious George, Thomas and Friends, Charlie Brown's Christmas, etc. etc. etc. 
   We washed our hands raw. 
   We slept off the norovirus which had incubated in our own tummies. 

Oh yeah, and we have a really busy 2 year old who felt great. He really wanted to play with his sick best-friend. (The bug finally caught him, too. He's sleeping it off as I write.)

Oh yeah, we have a nursing baby. 

- - - - - - -

The Kingdom interrupts our normal lives and guides us into a new normal. 
   This new normal is the space where we tend to the presence of God among us. 
   This new normal is where we tend to one another … in our vomit––whether literal or not. 
   Because when our filth is on our faces and clothes is when the good news is most profound. 

But we have to prepare a way. We must be ready to welcome the Kingdom as it breaks through our normal. 

It is yet to be seen whether the norovirus-interruption will also interrupt our Christmas travel; we leave Chicagoland in five days. If so, we'll have another opportunity to welcome the interruption as a chance for the Kingdom to draw near. 

Interruptions. An Advent Reflection.

We recently welcomed a third boy to our family. In the six weeks since, I've given myself a paternity leave. I've not been studying for my tests. I've not been "productive." But what should have been a peaceful time with the family has been speckled with anxiety. 

Last Tuesday I shared with my small group that I had been anxious. The Lord was calling me to welcome interruptions––from large to small: large, like welcoming a baby into the world. Small, like putting down my book for five minutes to read another book. 

We had been talking about the Sunday's sermon where we heard good news: The Kingdom of God comes in interruptions. We were challenged to ask the question: Have we prepared a way for the Lord to interrupt our lives? How so?

I had to answer "No!" 

My answer is emphatic because the question so literally applies to my life. 

Have I prepared a way for the Lord? 

No. I'm anxious about little interruptions of little people. They're getting in my way. (I confess that while this it looks terrible on the screen, it looks worse in real-life.)

I need to hear: "the Kingdom belongs to such as these." 

   And "Whenever you welcome one of these little ones, you welcome me." 

   And "Whatever you do for the least of these, you have done for me." 

Into interruptions I hear the voice in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the Lord!" He's coming! 

Or will I be too anxious to welcome his advent? Too busy to put my work down?

Have I prepared a way for the Lord? 

No. I've got this baby who has royally interrupted my life. 

   I'm not studying. 

      I'm not reading. 

         I'm not progressing. 

But there's nothing like a baby to interrupt life, to shake up what's normal so that we can be re-oriented to a new normal.

My question: 

Am I ready to be royally interrupted? Will I hear the angels, celebrating in the fields: "born this day, in the City of David, is a baby, who is Messiah King." 

That's a royal interruption if there ever was one. 

Come, Thou long expected Jesus

Born a child and yet a king

This post has been simmering for a while. It has taken back-burner because of a significant interruption: Norovirus. I'll post about this tomorrow. Update: You can find this post here.