New Birth on a Farm and God’s Greatest Gift

The wind was blowing outside our house. I could tell by the way the storm windows rattled off and on through the early evening. Yet our kitchen radiated with warmth. The kerosene stove, lit all through the long winter, was too hot to touch, and the kettle on top sputtered with hot water ready for use.

The stable.

I lived on a farm as a child. When I was young, I rarely ventured through the back kitchen door to the unheated summer kitchen, the shed beyond that, or the two large barns connected to the shed. More rarely still did I go to the stable, a smaller structure attached to one of the barns.

In the colder months, most of those buildings were left unheated except for the barn cellars where vegetables were stored. Yet the stable, like the kitchen at the other end of the chain, radiated unseen warmth.

I was in the kitchen when my father ran in from the barns. "Come quick," he said to me, while still catching his breath. "It's just been born!"

Old Mother Cow in retirement.

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I soon had on my coat and pulled on a knitted hat. Out I went with my father holding my  hand, steering me through the now darkened sheds and barns and on through the little white milk room to the stable door.

The door was black and thick with layers of insulation. Its handle was really a metal latch covered with sparkling white frost. Dad unlatched the door and immediately I smelled the familiar odor of warm straw where the animals slept.

The light was already on within. I was met with several sets of soft, brown eyes wondering what this human child was doing out so late at night. The air was warm, too. I couldn't even see my breath.

"Come over here," Dad said softly. "Isn't she the most beautiful little calf you ever did see?" He was beaming. "She was born less than an hour ago."

In one of the wooden stalls was our oldest cow affectionately named Old Mother Cow. Every year she gave birth to a new heifer. Her horns were curled around toward the center of her forehead. She was standing calmly with her new baby teetering almost under her still swollen body. The little calf was black and white like her mother, but she had longer, curly locks on her head and wild, dark eyes.

The mother cow  began licking her calf to make her clean for her first presentation. Dad was right. She was a pretty calf.

"We can call her Cinderella," I said. "Or Queen Victoria. Or Senorita..."

We were always celebrating the gift of life around the farm. It seemed like there was always a new batch of kittens, baby chickens with puffy, yellow fuzz, or velvety, tiny bunnies. Death did come to some animals, of course, but that phase of life was shielded from me in the early years. The celebration of life was not.

When I think of Jesus Christ as an infant born in a stable, I think of my father's cozy room with all the animals, big and small, young and old. I remember the joy the birth of a new creature gave.

All of us were given the gift of life and each birth was pleasing to our heavenly Father. He wanted us to be born and to live. Yet how much more precious was God's birth as a human, stooping down to our world so that He could give us the gift of new life in Him--eternal life.

Although the birth of Dad's new heifer was special, the gift God gave us the moment we were "born again" (John 3:3) is far more precious. Let's ponder that amazing moment and again give Him thanks for the greatest gift of all.