The Cry

This year, as we often do, we attended the Mobile Singing Children's Christmas performance.  These talented young people were singing a beautiful hymn about angels, I don’t recall which one, because my mind was on the role the angels played in our Lord’s birth.

This coming, and miraculous, pregnancy was announced directly to the Virgin Mary by the angel Gabriel:

“Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.” 

I suspect from that moment on, unseen and unheard angels accompanied Mary everywhere.  They were watching over and protecting Mary and the King of Heaven, whom she carried.  They protected her from danger, from falls, perhaps even from illness.  She was the one destined to bring about the birth of the Lord Jesus, and nothing was going to stop that.

They protected Joseph as well.  They knew this baby HAD to be born in Bethlehem, and Joseph was the one who had to take them there.  The eighty-mile trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem would have been considered long in those days, taking about a week. It would have been exceptionally long for a woman nine months pregnant.  The terrain was hilly and rocky, offering many opportunities for mishaps along the way. Angels must have lined the road between the two cities, watching carefully over Mary and her precious cargo.

Once Mary and Joseph were settled in the manger, which was likely a barn attached to the innkeeper’s house, all heaven was watching in anticipation.  Never in the history of mankind had the citizens of Heaven watched human events this closely.

As Mary’s labor continued and birth drew near, the anticipation in heaven grew.  I suspect every heavenly ear leaned toward the earth listening for one sound…

The cry.  

The first cry of the Lord Jesus born as a human. The God who became man and the man who remains God.

When that tiny cry pealed out in the manager, what joys, what glories, what music must have pealed out in heaven.  All of heavenly creation rejoiced in ways we cannot even imagine.  Christ was born!  The Son of God was now the Son of Man as well!

The rejoicing of the angels to the shepherds was just a tiny fraction of the rejoicing heard within the heavenly halls at the cry.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.