Her Twisted  Mouth  

 Dr. Richard Selzer was simultaneously a professor of surgery at Yale Medical School and a teacher of writing at Yale University. He wrote a number of books about his experiences in medicine. One of the most touching is from his Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery.

Dr. Selzer once removed a tumor from a young woman's face. In the process of excising the growth, it was necessary for him to sever one of her facial nerves. One side of her mouth was left insensitive and unresponsive. Concerned about how the woman and her husband would deal with her crooked mouth, he tells what happened:

Her husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together, they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight. Isolated from me, private.

Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry-mouth I have made, who gaze at each other, and touch each other generously, greedily?

The young woman speaks: "Will I always be like this?" she asks.

"Yes," I say. "It's because the nerve was cut."

She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. "I like it," he says. "It's kind of cute."

He bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate hers, to show that their kiss still works. I remember that the angels sometimes appeared in Bible times as mortals, and I hold my breath and wonder.

Angels sometimes appear as mortals? Yes. And God himself made such an appearance as Jesus - Beloved Son, God Incarnate, Emmanuel. And he adjusted his appearance, his words, and his touch to our sin-contorted frames.

It would be so easy to communicate judgment and rejection. How could a Holy God not reject our misshapen, fallen form? Why would he not flee our very presence? It would be unthinkable to any logical mind that he would embrace what we have become - both as a human race and as individuals.

Then we hear the Christmas Story. And we know that God does not run from us. To the contrary, he has become one of us to heal and rescue us.

"Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death - that is, the devil - and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death."

( Hebrews 2:14-15 )

Christmas reminds and reassures us all that God's tender love is real.                                                        RS