Jesus: Soft To Us

Why did Jesus come to us as a baby? To fulfill prophecy? To be one with us, one of us, one we could know and understand, one we could see and believe in, one who takes away our sins through his own body and blood? All this and much more!

Let me share an insight from Brisa, my three year old granddaughter:

She’s my youngest daughter, Rachel’s first-born. Rachel and Hector are missionaries in Costa Rica where Brisa was born. My wife and I live in Tennessee so our visits with them were precious and few. Our phone bill used to be terrible until I discovered "skype." Then we were able to visit by computer and actually see and hear our grand-baby Brisa regularly for free! She calls us Pop and Mimi. She learned to talk in English and Spanish, and by two years old could carry on a conversation with us. She loved for us to read Bible stories or children’s books to her and would always say, "Read me a book!" And one of us would read a book and show her the pictures. She never grew tired of it and we always ended our skype sessions with a prayer and a kiss on the screen. It became our regular ritual.

Hector and Rachel planned a trip to see us and we were so excited. We waited at the airport for them to get through customs and come... then we saw them and Brisa shouted with excitement and gave us all big hugs and kisses. Then she took Mimi’s face in her little three year old hands and said, "Mimi! You’re SOFT!"

She was so used to kissing the screen and this was the real thing! We laughed and cried and held her tight and brought them all home with us.

The next day we were showing Brisa around our home and she noticed pictures of our family on the wall. One picture had our parents in it with us and Brisa, ever curious, wanted to know who we were with. When we explained who they were Brisa wanted to go see them. We had to tell her that they had died and were with God in heaven.

Brisa looked thoughtfully and said, "Oh... then Jesus is SOFT to them."

We both froze and said quietly: Jesus... is.... soft... to them.

Maybe that’s why Jesus came as a baby. So he could be soft to us and we could be soft to him.