Properties
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- 926
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-26T19:09:22.943Z
- extracted_by
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- text
- 632 morning were to stand out very early and see it come up over the horizon. The first thing you would notice would be a little touch of light away up on the sky in the east, which you would think perhaps was a fire a long way off. Then you would see a little cloud growing red along its edges; pretty soon after you would discover that the tops of the hills were becoming bright all over. You would be sure now that something would pretty soon come into sight, but would not know what it was going to be, and would all the time be getting more and more interested and excited. After a while the sky would be full of light, and some of the highest hills be tipped with sunshine. Then at last, suddenly, right on the edge of the horizon, there flashes a spark of something so bright and so dazzling it almost makes the tears come in your eyes to look at it. The *sun* is rising. Now the brightness in the air, the red in the clouds, the glory on the hills, are all understood.
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635 Much like that was the way the people away back in Jerusalem, Hebron, Nazareth, and all the other towns had been watching for something that they were sure was coming, and that their prophets kept telling them was on the way. And at last the wonderful moment came. God's Son — not s-u-n, but S-o-n — came into the world at Bethlehem, and came as a little child.
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637 The children would never have felt nearly as much interest in Christ's coming into the world if, instead of coming as a babe, He had come as a full-grown man. I venture to think that nine out of ten of the children who look at our picture of the Nativity will let their eyes restlessly slip from one part to another of the picture till they discover the little Child, and that there their eyes will fasten. Children think more of children than they do of people that are grown. If two children with their mothers meet on the street, the children will turn around and look at each other. Small eyes like
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640 small things. Little minds can understand little things. It was kind in God, therefore, to let His Son come into the world as a God-child. If you had in your yard a tree twenty feet high and a flower two inches high, you would think a great deal more of the flower than you would of the tree. Little things for little eyes, little loves for little hearts.
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642 When the children look at the picture of the Nativity, one of the first thoughts that will come to them will be, “What a queer place it was for Jesus to be born in!” No furniture but straw, scarcely any other lodgers but that queer-looking little ass, and no interested people around but those rude minstrels accompanied by a hungry, wolfish dog. Certainly the place was by no means elegant, and not what we should exactly call comfortable. Very likely there are a great many worse places in our own town than this mule shed in Bethlehem, and children have to be born in little dirty rooms in New York because their parents are so poor
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