History Shaped in a Cradle

The year was 1809. The international scene was tumultuous. Napoleon was sweeping through Austria; blood was flowing freely. Nobody then cared about babies. But the world was overlooking some terribly significant births.

For example, William Gladstone was born that year. He was destined to become one of England’s finest statesman. That same year, Alfred Tennyson was born to an obscure minister and his wife. The child would one day greatly affect the literary world in a marked manner.

On the American continent, Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And not far away in Boston, Edgar Allan Poe began his eventful, albeit tragic, life. It was also in that same year that a physician named Darwin and his wife named their child Charles Robert. And that same year produced the cries of a newborn infant in a rugged log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky. The baby’s name? Abraham Lincoln.

If there had been news broadcasts at that time, I’m certain these words would have been heard: “The destiny of the world is being shaped on an Austrian battlefield today.” But history was actually being shaped in the cradles of England and America. Similarly, everyone thought taxation was the big news—when Jesus was born. But a young Jewish woman cradled the biggest news of all: the birth of the Saviour.

Isn’t it amazing that we have gotten so good at determining what is important and what is insignificant? We are masters of deciding, in a split second, what really matters. And isn’t it equally amazing that oftentimes we are dead wrong in our assessment?

We ascribe worth to the worthless and demean things that are truly of value. We value cash in our pockets more than the homeless man on the street all the while saying that we believe in the sanctity of human life. We devalue what we don't like or don't understand and we place a higher value on what we wish we had.

If the Baby in the manger teaches us anything it is to assess our own value systems. He left the wealth of heaven to come to a sinful, fallen world. He valued YOU and me more than life itself. Now that's some value!!