Twenty five years ago on Christmas Eve, my husband and I held our first born son for the first time. It wasn’t a stable and this was not the Son of God whose birth we celebrate this season, but as we held him and basked in the glow of his immortal spirit “trailing clouds of glory…From God, who is our home” we were certain that this little boy was a son of God and had been sent by Him to us. Christmas carols came from a small cassette player and as we heard the strains, we felt that just as the angels sang for the birth of the Son of God, there were angels rejoicing in the life of this boy.
In 1809, the eyes of the world were on Napoleon and the wars of Europe but there were other momentous events that brought little attention at all. “[In] 1809, . . . Gladstone [future British Prime Minister] was born at Liverpool; Alfred Tennyson was born at the Somersby rectory; and Oliver Wendell Holmes made his first appearance at Massachusetts. . . . Abraham Lincoln drew his first breath at Old Kentucky. Music was enriched by the advent of Frederic Chopin at Warsaw, and of Felix Mendelssohn at Hamburg. . . . Elizabeth Barrett Browning [from] Durham. . . . But nobody thought of babies. Everybody was thinking of battles. Yet . . . which of the battles of 1809 mattered more than the babies of 1809?….We fancy that God can only manage His world by big battalions . . . , when all the while He is doing it by beautiful babies. . . When a wrong wants righting, or a work wants doing, or a truth wants preaching, or a continent wants opening, God sends a baby into the world to do it.” (Frank W. Boreham as quoted by Elder Paul V. Johnson, March 14, 2023, BYU Devotional)
Though the angels sang at His birth, very few took notice of the Baby born at Bethlehem. Every day in quiet corners of the world, children are born, sent by God to bless the world. Most of their names will never be widely known but the Lord knows them. “Peace be unto you; as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you’…God sends His Son. The Son sends His servants- mortal men and women- to accomplish Their work.” (President M. Russell Ballard, April 2018). He sent you, He sent me to assist in His work “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39) This season and throughout the year, we join the angels in singing His praise and doing His work.