advent 3: ugly Christmas doll

My favorite Christmas toy is a hand-sewn Cabbage Patch Doll.  As a kid, I used to get mad when people called Elizabeth ugly, but even my own daughter looked at her, threw her on the ground, and went to grab a book.  I guess I was holding out hope that my own child might understand, but I can see now what I couldn't see through my pink-rimmed elementary school glasses: Elizabeth's unfortunate under bite, her weirdly dis-proportionate body, and her eyes that seem to follow you around the room (and not in an artsy Mona Lisa kind of way). 

In spite of all that, I love her.

For once that year I got it--Christmas is about love--about love coming to be With Us.  From before I can remember, I've just loved her, and that's why I picked her.  God picks us this Christmas.  We are His from before we can remember.  God comes to earth as Jesus specifically because he loves (your name here), regardless of if you're good enough, regardless of how you measure up in this world, and regardless of how the world's not picking you, God looks past the rest--straight at you and says, I've got dibs.  And he says it in the least expected of ways . . . a manger, a virgin, a small town . . . but if I look through those pink glasses of a kid who gets it, it all makes a weird kind of grace-filled sense for a God of Who's all about love.