The Dragon and the Baby

I want to show you something you cannot see with ordinary eyes.

There was a war once. Not on any field you could walk to, but up in heaven, behind the sky, older than the oldest story your grandmother knows.

And in the middle of it stood a woman. She was waiting to have a baby, soon, very soon. You could see it was almost time.

But she was not alone.

In front of her, waiting too, was a dragon.

He was red and enormous, so big his tail brushed the stars loose from the sky like crumbs off a table. He had many heads, and many horns, and eyes that did not blink. And he was waiting for one thing only.

He was waiting for the baby.

He crouched low in front of the woman, hungry, his mouth already open. The moment that little child was born, the dragon meant to swallow him whole.

The littlest, newest, most helpless thing in all the world, and an inch away, the biggest, oldest, hungriest monster.

Sometimes it feels like that, doesn't it. Like the thing you love most is so small, and the thing that wants to hurt it is so big. Like the monster is bigger than the baby.

The dragon thought so too.

And then the baby was born.

And before the dragon could close his jaws, before he could move at all, the child was lifted. Swept up, quick as a breath, up and up, all the way to God and to his throne, right out of the dragon's open mouth and safe in his Father's hands.

The dragon snapped at nothing but air.

That old dragon is the serpent, the very same one, the ancient liar who whispered in the garden long, long ago. He has been hungry ever since. He has been waiting ever since, for this Child most of all.

Because there was a promise about this Child.

A promise so old it was spoken on the saddest day in the garden, when God looked at the serpent and said: one is coming. A child of the woman. And he will crush your head.

The dragon never forgot. That is why he waited with his mouth open. He thought that if he could only swallow the baby, the promise would die in the dark.

But you cannot swallow this Child.

He was lifted up, this day, out of reach. And there is a day still coming when he will not slip away at all. He will turn and face the dragon, and set his heel upon that ancient head, the head that has hissed and bitten and frightened God's little ones since the beginning, and he will crush it. And it will stay crushed.

The monster only looks bigger than the baby.

The baby is the One who wins, and the dragon knows it, and the whole sky is getting ready to sing.