I am going to attempt to write one Advent/Christmas thought a day through Epiphany, based on the Psalm I am reading that day.  (I know Advent doesn’t start till tomorrow, but this will make up for an invariable miss.)  We’ll see how it goes!  I have a laptop now, though, so I can sit right at the dining table and do it as part of my devotions, so that should help.  (If I go to my desk, I’m tempted to check email, Facebook, and oh, there’s that note to check the asiflex account, and… I’m lost!)  Here goes!

Psalm 11:7  “For the LORD is righteous; He loves righteous deeds; the upright shall see His face.”

Our first four kids were pretty much bald when they were born.  Stayed that way for quite a while, too.  So, when our fifth one was born, it’s no wonder that the first trait we noticed was that she had HAIR.  Not a thick mop, but definitely much more than her siblings had been graced with.  Her face, though, was very like her siblings – definitely an Aasen baby!

I think most moms spend those months of pregnancy thinking about their baby’s face.  Will he have my nose?  Your chin?  Grandpas’s dimples?  PLEASE not Uncle Humperdink’s nose!  Nowadays, of course, we have ultrasound in HD, and are able to see Baby’s face and profile in utero with astonishing clarity, but, even so, it’s not the same as that first amazing gaze into those precious little eyes, that awed poring over every line of that little face.  I’m sure it was no different for Mary.

Gabriel told her that she had “found favor with God”, and that she was to bear a son, the Messiah, the very Son of God.  I wonder if she ever thought of that verse from the Psalm and how literally it was to be true for her?  When “the Babe, the world’s Redeemer, first revealed His sacred face”, she was privileged to be the first, with Joseph, to gaze upon that face in all its beautiful, bloody birth mess.  The upright did, indeed, see His face.