Baby Jesus and Lent’s Refining

It may be Lent, but I’m thinking about the baby Jesus, thanks to a picture of a friend’s grandson, Owen, asleep in his mother’s arms. God, who arrived on earth as a baby, is inviting me to be like a baby this Lent and ponder God’s care for me.

Babies are so instantly lovable, vulnerable, trusting, and in Jesus’ case, totally not what the Jews expected in a savior. In a passage we hear on the feast of Jesus’ Presentation, Malachi writes, “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi….” (3:2–3)

I bet Malachi never expected the Refiner to show up at the temple as a baby.

God allows people to be fine-tuned throughout life, and this process also happened to Jesus. He modeled this refining every step of his young life: he was born in a stable far from home, rushed to a foreign country to avoid a treacherous king who killed babies, and then moved back to Israel, where dangers still lurked, so he was settled in Nazareth, where he was raised in a humble home.

Owen’s photo made me think that the refining to prepare us for heaven has already begun, through whatever we are going through from birth on, in our bodies, families, neighborhoods, and the global community. Like a baby, I need not fear the Savior’s arrival in the temple of my heart.

If I behaved like a baby, I’d be resting undisturbed in loving arms instead of feeling scared and maybe depressed by the broken world around me.

Oh, yes, babies cry when hungry or tired, as do I. In Lent I whine as I attempt self-refinements through fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and service. But life is refining me despite my efforts to control it. I need to rest in my Abba’s arms. God slips into my heart gently, like a darling infant a parent can’t help loving. Can I rest like a small child amid chaos? Jesus did.

I rely on God the incarnate—a baby—to accept with humility the fuller’s lye. It’s shocking. It’s mysterious. It’s unexplainable.

I look at Owen and wonder about his unpredictable future. Like every human, he will be tempered like steel.

What I endure prepares me for heaven, refining my heart to approach this world’s nightmarish realities with equanimity. Throughout Jesus’ life he witnessed the pain of struggling people. He didn’t fix everything nor leave the world in perfect condition. He accepted the metal worker’s hammer from infancy.

Malachi’s refining furnace is life’s inevitable experiences: in pains of aging, in overwhelming sorrow when a best friend dies, and in witnessing evil that we cannot overcome. The launderer’s bleach works slowly, even gently, through trials. The infant God infiltrates my heart with simplicity and courage-giving love. And Lent prepares me to receive a vulnerable God, whose immeasurable love bends over backwards to forgive, even if I fail in all my Lenten attempts to pray more, give more, fast better, and abstain better.

And this consoles me.