A Lap for a Throne

My mom rocked me when I was little, holding me close. She sang sometimes, the rails of the rocker creaking in calming rhythm. One nursery ballad told of the unlikely courtship of a frog and mouse. It sounded fairytale-like, though looking back now it seems more like a portent.

She learned “Froggy Went a Courtin’” in the Tennessee railroad town in which she grew up. Given the song’s old roots, she might well have heard from her own mother, seated on her lap on their clapboard house’s front porch rocker.

The adventures of the frog have fanciful lyrics, but they hint at what faces any child faces coming into the world. The lilt of the rhyme carries, I see now, a sharp edge.

Froggy went a courtin’, and he did ride …

Sword and pistol by his side.

I don’t think they were play weapons.

Yet I wasn’t afraid. I heard of Froggy’s fortunes on a mother’s lap, settled into a sturdy rock maple chair, soothed and assured. If I tripped and fell headlong onto pavement, if a bully next door pushed some of us kids around, if I passed a living room TV broadcasting happenings that vaguely stirred anxiety, I still would be held, reassured.

I find it moving to see, this season, how God comes to live among us and amid our sorrows and dangers. Jesus was first a child, vulnerable to the things that make a little one afraid. Reflecting on ancient portraits of Mary and the little Jesus--centuries-old icons--Anglican archbishop Rowan Williams was moved to realize: “Now when we look at God, we do not see … terror and darkness … we see Jesus taking his throne on a mother’s lap.”

Amid the hurts of a world of gun-prompted school lockdowns, feuding politicians, our own losses and loneliness, Jesus’ coming to live here seems remarkable. God becomes small, vulnerable, childlike in Jesus.

But God also comes as a presence that is soon to be large, strong, unshakeable. Jesus leaves not only the glories of heaven, but also the security of a mother’s lap, facing suffering and his end in the cross, only then moving toward hard-won triumph. He does it for our good and for our sakes, for the sake of a world into which we too must venture.