A baby, all hope and possibility.

Byline: FROM HEART TO HEART By Melanie Oommen For The Register-Guard

For the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn child whom she wrapped in bands of cloth and laid in a manger, because there was no room in the inn ...

The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2

I was pregnant with my first child during the Advent season and held my newborn in my tired, grateful arms on Christmas Eve 1996. That was the year the tree didn't get decorated, the year we showed up so late for the Christmas Eve service that we sang "Silent Night" and then it was time to go home, the year we happily ate leftovers for our Christmas dinner.

Our gaze was completely focused on the miracle of our child. This baby demanded so much, and the giving was joy.

I had always loved the Christmas story of Jesus' birth: a story of peace and hope, a God yearning for such intimacy with humanity that he took human form and walked among us. But when my child was born, the Word became flesh for me.

What might it mean, I pondered in those first days of parenthood, to know a God unafraid to embody qualities of vulnerability, yearning, hunger, powerlessness? An infant is total potential, all possibility, and from the moment of birth, influenced and formed by his or her environment and, at the same time, born with an innate beauty and integrity that cannot be touched by any of life's trials, by any of the world's voices.

That God should come to us like this, all hope and possibility, able to be touched and formed, how might that change how I see the world? What might it mean to see this God presence in the face of a brother or sister, in all creation?

That Christmas Day, I went for a walk, my little one asleep in his Dad's loving arms. The streets were empty, the air cold. The only other person out was a man in tattered clothes, huddled on the sidewalk trying, unsuccessfully, to keep warm.

I had probably passed by this man before on these urban streets in this city where we lived then. This time I stopped. This time I saw him. This one, too, was somebody's child, a sacred life. Beloved, beautiful, cherished, born once full of possibility and hope. I breathed deeper, my exhale a silent prayer for this one, alone, vulnerable, divine.

On that cold, quiet street I remembered the shepherds in the fields of Luke's Gospel, the ones who the angels visited after baby Jesus was born. "Fear not" they were told, but come to behold the mystery.

As the story goes, the shepherds dropped everything and rushed off to Bethlehem to witness the miracle of life. There they found a baby and his parents in a barn, the Divine dwelling in the most unlikely of places. With these new parents they shared the news, that this child was meant to be good news of great joy for all. And they were amazed.

Melanie Oommen is an associate minister at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Eugene. This column is coordinated by Two Rivers Interfaith Ministries, a network of more than 35 religious and spiritual traditions in the Eugene-Springfield area. For more information, visit www.interfaitheugene.org or call 344-5693.