For sur

Before fluid, like water washing against a dam's walls, build up in my chest and effectively took me out for a while, I was doing a lot of reflective work about the Christmas season. Getting back to it, I wanted to look at the season through the eyes of children.

My youngest male grand child, Gavin, is the future wordsmith in the family, I think. He sees the world differently certainly than his older brother who is the ar-tiiiist. Gavin is in a word hilarious. Filling a notebook of Gavinisms would be a good start on a TV sit-com.

On a recent trip to a drug store (my home away from home) I instructed Gavin, who is four, that he would be getting nothing toy wise in the store so there was no reason to ask. I carefully explained, then asked him to repeat it. He did. I asked a third time if he understood. He looked me square in the eyes and said, "Yes." I said the old "Yes what?" He squirreled up his nose and said, "Yes," paused and added "for sur."

We entered the store, made a wrong turn down the toy aisle and he began to ask for everything he saw, one by one, carefully, not really waiting for an answer. He was rapid-fire asking as if somehow in there would be an answer he wanted to hear. Maybe even "yes for sur."

Reaching the mid-point of the aisle, nearly laughing out loud, I stopped and looked down at him as he eyed a dinosaur something or other with relish. "Gavin, I thought we talked about not asking for things in this store." He answered without thought or pause, "I hoped you had changed your mind."

Fair enough, for sur.

Recently as my oldest daughter visited me in that dreaded hospital (my second home away from home), she told me that she and Gavin had had a discussion about what Christmas was about. The answer for her to him came close to being a good one. She and he talked about family and what family means and how family and Christmas should be good buddies.

Gavin decided, she said, he would go around telling everyone, his big brother, his step-cousin Karli, his cousin Emma, that Christmas is about family.  Remember this is a kid who asked for everything in a DRUG store, so perhaps family is a big, big step.

The Christian family would be a good next step for learning for him.

All this led me to thinking about that "first family" of Christmas. Growing up, was Jesus like most of us? Did he live a typical kid-like life? Was he sickly, strong, pushy, good-tempered? What was he like with the neighbors, the kids in the neighborhood?

In Rich Mullins song Boy like you, man like me, he wrote, "You was a baby like I was once, you were cryin' in the early morning; you were born in a stable, Reid Memorial was where I was born; They wrapped you in swaddling clothes, me they dressed in baby blue. ... And you was a boy like I was once But was You a boy like me? I grew up around Indiana, you grew up in Galilee; And if I ever grow up Lord I want to grow up and be just like you."

The point is as clear as toys on a shelf. Jesus grew up like every other little boy and girls in the tiny Jewish villages that circled the life-giving water of the Sea of Galilee. He began to learn the work that his father, Joseph, worked at...carpentry or stone masonry or whatever that work truly was. He began to learn in the synagogues that were home to the men of the area. He learned, the scriptures say.

He learned about family, before there was a Christmas.

The key, then, before there is a Christmas, is to love family deeply. Though there be ups and necessary downs, though there be arguments and clashes and shocking deaths and wonderful holidays together, it is all about family.

Though I was sick enough to be wobbly and wacky this past weekend, the lift I got from seeing my three children together was well worth is. If there was anything on the planet I could change it would be to have them and Mary and I live close together and see each other much, much more often.

For sur.