Lessons in Faith

“I can’t believe that Maggie wasn’t even HERE last Christmas!” Hannah remarked as we watched our eleven-month-old crawl through brightly colored wrapping paper and munch on sparkling red bows with great delight. “And NOW she’s BARELY A BABY ANYMORE!” my kindergartener exclaimed with a touch of wonder. Then, with a giggle, Hannah asked, “Do you remember when I DIDN’T BELIEVE Maggie was real?”

I giggled myself at the memory and then threw my hands around my six-year-old. “I remember, Hannah,” I said, “And I’m glad that your little sister is REAL after all!”

“Me, too,” Hannah said as she reached out to tousle Maggie’s baby fine hair. As I watched my two youngest girls play together amidst the Christmas clutter, I thanked God for the ways He’s already used the short life of Magdalene Hope to teach all of us- especially one doubting little girl- a lesson in faith…

“Are you sure God is growing a BABY in there?” four-year-old Hannah asked in July of 2008 as she wrapped her arms around my midsection and pressed her round face to my belly.


“I’m sure,” I replied, remembering the pink plus sign on the home pregnancy test that had quietly announced God’s latest gift for the Bruxvoort family.


Hannah placed an ear to my stomach and listened intently. “But I don’t hear anything in there,” she said with chagrin.


She pulled back, studied my still normal looking middle; and then declared with a touch of annoyance, “I don’t see anything in there, either, Mom!”


Finally, as if giving her doubts one last chance to flee, Hannah pressed her nose against my belly, took a big sniff, and skeptically proclaimed, “I don’t even smell a baby in there. What if you’re wrong?”


Suddenly empathetic to my daughter’s misgivings, I pulled my doubter into a hug and whispered, “Let’s just watch and see what God will do!”

So we waited and we watched. And as 2008 drew to a close, even our dubious preschooler agreed that God had indeed been “growing something” right beneath our noses (or more accurately, just beneath Mom’s heart). My protruding belly and disappearing lap were tangible reminders that God is at work even when we can’t see His hands. As I celebrated Christmas last year with a near-term baby tucked inside of me, I realized that the faith lesson for Hannah was really-at it’s core- the hope of the Christmas message.

Centuries ago, God’s hands shaped His greatest work of redemption in the obscurity of a young peasant’s womb. Skeptics scoffed at Mary’s claims; while her own family questioned her story. Yet, nine months later in the shadows of a Bethlehem stable, tangible evidence of God’s lavish love arrived with a newborn’s cry. Wrapped in wrinkled flesh and amniotic fluid, Heaven’s Christmas gift did not exactly look like a Savior; He did not sound like a Savior, and, He certainly did not smell like a Savior. But his birth brought hope to the hopeless and his death secured life for the lost. Immanuel– God is with us- whether we recognize Him or not!

It’s hard to miss the proof of God’s handiwork these days… she leaves piles of animal crackers, shreds of confiscated toilet paper and echoes of laughter in her wake as flashes a four-toothed grin at her biggest fans. And her precious life reminds us that even when we do not spot evidence of His hands at work, we must choose to believe that God will finish what He began in a humble Bethlehem stable 2000 years ago. Because He is still with us!

Today’s Treasure: God is working all things for good (Romans 8:28).