What does the Christmas story look like through the eyes of our children? As adults, we all know how it goes to some degree or another. But how does a 3 year old lad wrap his little imagination around the idea of an angel appearing to a guy and telling him his wife is going to give birth to the son of God?

It’s always fun to stop and think about some things in life from the perspective of our kids. For example, washing the car is one of those chores that comes with all the other headaches of owning a vehicle and being responsible. But I remember when I was a kid, washing the car was basically the world’s greatest excuse for having an epic water fight that involved throwing wet sponges at my brothers and making Santa beards with the suds. It always went to the next level when my mum took us through the town’s drive-through car wash with its massive brushes and water jets. If anything looks like getting eaten by a dragon to a kid, it’s without a doubt the drive-through carwash! I’m fairly certain my little sister was traumatised by it until she was about 13. Good times!

As kids our imaginations seem to take the mundane day to day events of life and then turn them on their heads into brilliant excuses for adventure and fun. Not only this, but through the simplicity of their life views, children sometimes see the truths of life far clearer than we do as adults.

Jesus himself picked up on the beauty of a childlike view on life. The book of Matthew says that;

“Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.”

Children have a way of cutting through the clouds of confusion that “maturity” and “life experience” often bring. And if there is a story of life that has been wrapped up in so much old-people-ness that it sometimes fails to register on the life-relevance scale, it’s the true story of Christmas, the Birth of Christ.

The nativity story is literally one of the greatest chapters of the greatest love story ever told. The story looks at the amazing way that God himself, the creator of the universe, came to earth in the form of a helpless child to save us all from that which we could not save ourselves. Yet today, thanks to the commercialisation of the holiday season, we often group this story alongside Santa coming down the chimney and reindeers with glowing red noses.

So if the story of the birth of Jesus needs a little childlike refreshing for you, then take just 3 minutes and 52 seconds out of your day and see how a bunch of kids from St Paul’s Church in New Zealand see the greatest love story ever told. You won’t be disappointed.