Tis the season for watching classic animated Holiday TV shows—and even not so classic ones, especially when you have small children seeing them for the first time.  My family watched one of those “not-so classic” shows the other night—Twas the Night Before Christmas (1974).  Do you remember Twas the Night Before Christmas?  When we watched it, my wife said, “I don’t think I remember this one.”  And mostly the plot of the show is forgettable compared to classics like Rudolph and Frosty, but there is one memorable song in the show called “Even a Miracle Needs a Hand.” You can view the full song lyrics at: www.davesaunders.net/blog/2007/10/even-a-miracle-needs-a-hand/.

TV and movies often get me thinking about God. As I listened to that children’s song, I started thinking about the Incarnation—God coming to be with us as a human being.  In his book, Miracles, C.S. Lewis calls the Incarnation the Grand Miracle.  Says Lewis, “Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.”  God comes to be with us, invading human history in a most unlikely way.  The Maker of the Universe becomes one of the creatures he has made.  Jesus is born as a baby, grows to become a man, and suffers a horrific death on a Roman cross to save us and set us all free to become the people God dreams we can be. 

It strikes me that in a very real sense, even the Grand Miracle needed a hand.  In other words, God needed people to, as the song says, help our Maker make [God’s] dreams come true.  And the person he chose to work with most directly was a teenage girl named Mary. 

One of the verses of the song goes like this:
You hope while I hurry
You pray while I plan
We’ll do what’s necessary cause
Even a miracle needs a hand

In some sense, that verse is a summary of the emotional whirlwind that must have swept into Mary’s life after hearing the incredible news that she would become the mother of God.  She was probably hoping she wasn’t totally crazy for believing the message the angel shared with her that night.  She was no doubt hurrying to make preparations to travel to see her cousin Elizabeth and tell her the incredible news.  She was praying that God would help her figure out how to break the news to her family and friends. And like any expectant mother, I’m sure Mary was planning for all that had to be done in the next nine months.

When God came to Mary, God found someone who no doubt wrestled with many fears and doubts about what was going on in her body.  After all, here was a very young mother-to-be facing an unplanned pregnancy; that could not have been easy.  The life she had been planning with her fiancé Joseph had been thrown into chaos with this news—as can sometimes happen when God acts in our lives unexpectedly.

In the end, Mary was willing to do what was necessary to help God bring the Grand Miracle into being. Luke says that her reply was: I am the Lord’s servant; let it be as you say.  And God did just that! She became, as Martin Luther put it, “the workshop in which God works.”  She watched the very Son of God grew in her belly shifting and kicking as growing babies do.  She nursed him as an infant, she helped him learn to walk and talk, and she watched him grow into a man, knowing in her heart that her son had a great destiny to fulfill—though perhaps even she did not fully understand that destiny at the time.

The next verse in the song says:
You love and I’ll labor
You sit while I stand
Get help from a next door neighbor cause
Even a miracle needs a hand

Mary wasn’t the only one involved in lending this Grand Miracle a hand.  She had support from her husband Joseph.  Joseph was shocked when he first learned Mary was pregnant; he was ready to divorce Mary quietly to try and save face for all parties.  (He had every legal right to divorce her and demand punishment, but he chose to show mercy.)  He doesn’t want his fiancé to face shame; he loves Mary deeply. Joseph has a dream where he too encounters an angel, and is told that Mary’s incredible story is true and he should carry through with his plans to marry her and help her raise her son.  Joseph made the choice believe the angel and to love Mary while she labored through the tumultuous nine months prior to the birth and then as she literally labors through a birth experience that no mother should have to endure.  She gives birth to the Messiah in a space more suitable for habitation by livestock than by human beings without the benefit of any modern medicine or comforts.

Joseph also stood by Mary as she carried Jesus in her womb and supported her along the way.  And shortly be before the birth, Joseph literally stood alongside Mary as she sat on the back of a donkey facing an arduous 43-mile journey to Bethlehem to participate in a census in Joseph’s ancestral hometown. 

And, along the way, I’m sure the mother and Earthly father of Jesus even got help from neighbors whether they lived next door or far away.  We read about at least one of these far-away neighbors in the Christmas story.  Luke says that one innkeeper in Bethlehem was kind enough to rent out his manger when no other rooms were available in the city.  In a sense, even the innkeeper lends a hand to the Grand Miracle by giving a place for the birth to take place.

So it appears that indeed even the Grand Miracle needed a hand.  God doesn’t need to use us… but he chooses to.  How incredible is that?! When God wants to accomplish something in the world, he usually uses ordinary people like Mary and Joseph… and like you and me... our flaws and frailties not withstanding. There doesn’t really seem to be a Plan B waiting in the wings.  We’re it!

When the Holy Spirit came upon Mary that day, she could be receptive because she was already open to God working in her life. God was “living” in Mary long before the Son of God came to life in her womb.  She was open to hearing from God and believing that what God says was true.  She believed God had the power to do what God said he would do, no matter how impossible it seemed.

How about you?  Are you likewise open to God invading your life today? Can Christ find fertile ground to come to life in you?  We aren’t the literal God-bearer the way that Mary was, but the Apostle Paul often says that the risen Christ lives in every believer.  That means everyone who calls themselves a follower of Christ should be a “workshop in which God works.”  We should all carry Christ to a world that desperately needs to hear the message of hope that God brings.  I pray that each of us in our own unique God-designed way, can lend a hand in bringing the Grand Miracle of the Incarnation to life in new and fresh ways during this Advent and Christmas season.