“What child is this?” Although it is Jesus the hymn is asking about, is there a parent who hasn’t stumbled blindly into the awe the question evokes? The first time you are fully aware that this baby is indeed a new being — perhaps when you first see her open her eyes, or feel him grip your finger — it is hard not to be struck with the momentous question, “Who are you, and who will you become?”

With the eyes of Jesus, we might in fact ask this question every time we meet any person of any age, for that person is born anew into our lives with just as much sacred wholeness as a newborn child. Perhaps this is part of the discipline to which those innocent and solemn eyes that call out to us even from the Jesus of Christmas cards are inviting us — the attempt to recognize in each other the truth of that language we use, sometimes glibly, when we refer to others as children of God.

Part of what it means to be a child of God is that at any age, our future is still wide open and we can still be called in surprising ways. Greg Bentley, the student who was planning to be a doctor at some point, heard his life ask him, “What child are you really?” and was suddenly open to hearing a call to the pastorate. As the insert points out, at several points in Greg’s life when he thought he knew where he was going, that question appeared with a new and sudden immediacy as the Spirit called him in a new direction. This past spring and summer, he experienced it both as a child of God and as a father. His second daughter, Johari, was born with health problems that had her in and out of the hospital for most of her first four months of life. Again and again he found himself wondering not only what future was calling her, but also what role he could have in helping her get there.

That’s another part of what it means to be a child of God: to accept our dependence on others. Johari not only needed the skilled hands of medical professionals, but also the loving hands of her parents and sister to help her through the trauma she encountered very early in her life. In truth, our need for one another never leaves us, though we may at times believe we have gotten beyond it. So that’s yet another important element to being a child of God — we are called to offer those gentle, loving hands to one another in whatever way we can.

Maybe this brings us back to the source point from which the Christmas Joy Offering tradition has always sprung: we are called to recognize every other person as a child of God, to help each other discover who we are each called to be, and to ease each other’s pains. Through the years, this Offering has given Presbyterians a chance to do that. Through one half of the Offering, we reach out to those who, like the young Greg Bentley, are listening through the chaos of messages bombarding them for the clear voice of God’s call in their lives. The other half offers support to those who have encountered needs their call doesn’t enable them to meet by themselves. Both are sacred encounters, the touch of our lives with those of another child of God. May we give generously, and God grant that the touch our gifts enable may open our own lives as well as those who are helped by our gifts directly.

See the bulletin insert