Jesus didn't have Pampers

You don't really ponder much at 3am in the morning with a whimpering baby trying to communicate her needs to you, but as I changed her second diaper in 30 minutes...

(aside: she's really sneaky about doing her business right after you changed a diaper that was merely wet but you felt too guilty to leave on her, even though Pampers is so darn efficient at wicking moisture away from the skin you weren't sure she was urinating at all at first)

...and marveled groggily at diaper technology...

(in a stroke of brilliance, Pampers has a little stripe that turns green when wet, thus notifying you when you need to invest another $0.23 or so in their remarkable company. Al is quite the avid investor)

I realized that Jesus didn't have Pampers.

And Mary was taking care of a newborn in a stable without easy access to a washing machine or a host of eager relatives willing to help her in those early days (they didn't even have family housing, for heaven's sake!). So the Word who created all that there is humbled himself to the point of periodically sitting in his own waste and having to cry out to one of his own creatures for help and relief.

We burn through our wipees and cloths and disposables and desitin at an alarming rate with a little one who eats every couple of hours or so and digests what she eats in 90 minutes; these luxuries are in handy little dispensers next to anti-bacterial hand gel for mommy and daddy after the clean-up is through. We call this a stressful period of life with a newborn, but oh how easy it has been made! How often did Jesus have to chafe in a soiled diaper of some sort due to poverty, I wonder? How often did He whimper and cry for relief of His discomfort?

The nitty-gritty of the humility of the Son in the Incarnation strikes me more and more. How often I have agreed that for the Son of God to become a baby is to become so vulnerable, and yet the depth of that vulnerability is in the details, not in the easy generalization. Jesus required near-constant care and attention to the most basic of needs for living creatures, every day, for months on end. He who is life to us chose to need a young woman to sustain His body and to train His limbs, to teach His lips to smile and His mouth to laugh. As I care for our little one, changing yet another diaper and wiping up half-digested milk from her face, I remember Him and worship.

Such is the glory of our God!