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The Christ Child
At Christmas, we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ—the miracle of God coming to earth as a baby. Scripture tells us we must become “as little children” to enter into the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3). If the Son of God himself became a child, and if our own salvation also depends on becoming like a child, then what do babies and children reveal about God’s nature—and our own?
From beloved author Adam Miller, The Christ Child is a Christmas meditation that examines the scriptural accounts of Jesus’s birth, the characteristics of children, and invites us to consider how we can become more like them during the holiday season and throughout the year.
From beloved author Adam Miller, The Christ Child is a Christmas meditation that examines the scriptural accounts of Jesus’s birth, the characteristics of children, and invites us to consider how we can become more like them during the holiday season and throughout the year.
96 pages, Paperback
Published October 7, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
December 16, 2024
A short, but a packed reading. Miller never fails to provide fresh insight to a repeated subject. What a great read and perspective for this season celebrating the birth of Christ!
January 13, 2025
I cannot get enough of Adam Miller. Please keep writing!
December 31, 2025
I feel as though every time I read one of Adam Miller’s works I gain a new perspective; this was no different. A fun and short Christmas read, “The Christ Child” reminds and encourages the reader to have a little more awe, imagination, and love in our lives.
February 22, 2025
What a beautiful meditation on "becoming a child." Adam Miller has done it again. I first discovered Miller's books through his "Paraphrase" series on Ecclesiastes, Romans, and Songs of Solomon. He has a way of finding new and imaginative readings that are very Mormon, but not stereotypically? orthodoxically? normally? Sunday School-ey? so. In this book for example, he will quote Abinadi and Alma, but at the same time will reference the cross quite explicitly that would make a Mormon look twice.
Adam centers on three characteristics that define what it means to become like a child: Awe, Imagination, and Love. The first one I get, because it's everywhere in the gospel. But the first two, I don't think I have seen on a list of Christlike attributes. But he has convinced me, and I of course fall short. I have a big ego and internal story about where I have been and where I am going-- which he asks us to repent of in Love. I see the world through one consistent lens, often judging others and myself in snap decisions, which he asks us to repent of in Imagination. And things that are beautiful-- the sacrament, Christmas, children, baptisms, testimonies-- I find myself feeling hollow or naive or silly, which he asks us to repent of in Awe. I have felt some of these things before, but the framework that Miller has put together is profound, and I'm grateful for having read it. This is another book for the book contest I'm judging btw.
Adam centers on three characteristics that define what it means to become like a child: Awe, Imagination, and Love. The first one I get, because it's everywhere in the gospel. But the first two, I don't think I have seen on a list of Christlike attributes. But he has convinced me, and I of course fall short. I have a big ego and internal story about where I have been and where I am going-- which he asks us to repent of in Love. I see the world through one consistent lens, often judging others and myself in snap decisions, which he asks us to repent of in Imagination. And things that are beautiful-- the sacrament, Christmas, children, baptisms, testimonies-- I find myself feeling hollow or naive or silly, which he asks us to repent of in Awe. I have felt some of these things before, but the framework that Miller has put together is profound, and I'm grateful for having read it. This is another book for the book contest I'm judging btw.
December 17, 2025
I was hesitant to read this book after reading Original Grace, but I gave it a shot. Much of Original Grace went over my head, but that was not the case with this book. Honestly, I loved it. He takes a simple phrase, the concept of becoming like a child, and dives into it, breaking it down into easy to understand pieces. A great read.
December 6, 2025
This was the perfect, short, Christmas read for me. I especially loved it as a parent learning from and observing my children. I highlighted a lot.
January 4, 2025
Insightful look at Christian discipleship.
Twelve Books of Christmas 2024 12/12
Twelve Books of Christmas 2024 12/12
November 14, 2024
This book.....oh man. It simply made me smile every time I read it. And not only that, as I smiled, I had to put the book down to ponder-to think about the amazing one liners that Miller delivers about the beautiful characteristics of children. It's short. Only 84 pages. It became my morning companion as I ate my homemade granola mix. But oh what is on those pages...in just a few words. Simple truths that we can all be reminded of every day!
Oh to be a child again. The ultimate desire should be to find and acquire some of the wonderful childlike traits even as adults. To see the world as a child sees it--with a lantern rather than a spotlight. To imagine like a child. To marvel and be in awe like children. To feel what others feel and freely love all. These are some of the many treasures shared in this little gem. It will not disappoint....especially if you open your heart and mind like that of a child.
Oh to be a child again. The ultimate desire should be to find and acquire some of the wonderful childlike traits even as adults. To see the world as a child sees it--with a lantern rather than a spotlight. To imagine like a child. To marvel and be in awe like children. To feel what others feel and freely love all. These are some of the many treasures shared in this little gem. It will not disappoint....especially if you open your heart and mind like that of a child.
December 26, 2024
Adam Miller is always a joy to read. He’s a philosopher/theologian extraordinaire. Here he writes about becoming as a child, taking on the beginner’s mind, the mind of Christ, with expansive ability to imagine and unlimited capacity to love. He explores the idea much as does Richard Rohr when he talks about cleaning the mirror of our minds to get back to the beginner’s mind with which we can see the world more clearly. Adam also talks about the advantages children have by having not developed an ego yet, with all the need to create a lifetime timeline and narrative by which to explain everything as though we are the main character and hero. Children haven’t yet developed this capacity so they are free to conceive of the world around them in ways adults usually fail to do unless they overcome the ego.
All in all a quick and delightful read.
All in all a quick and delightful read.
December 31, 2024
Adam Miller invites us to reflect on Christ condescending and coming to earth as a little child, the characteristics of children, and how through becoming more like a child - at Christmastime and throughout the year - we can become more like Him. I loved the format of starting each chapter with one of Miller's Christmas photographs, peeking at the awe and imagination and love found in children and in Christmas.
"Like Christ, children are quick to love, quick to trust, quick to forgive, quick to embrace. They're built for empathy. They feel what others feel. They cry when we cry. They smile when we smile. They laugh when we laugh. All their windows are open and all their doors unlocked. This is atonement: in the garden and on the cross, Christ feels everything we feel."
"To become a child again - to be converted and saved - I'll need to recover that child's mind. I'll need all of his awe, imagination, and love. I'll need to be attuned, amplified, and decentered. But still, vital as this is, it's not enough - or even desirable - for me to simply become a child again. It's not enough for me to just be a son. The world is full of people who've never grown up. To be saved, to be a disciple of Christ, I must learn how to be both an adult and a child. I must learn how to be both a father and a son... This is the mystery of godliness itself: how to be both. How to become an adult, tempered by age and experience and, nonetheless, see the world through a child's eyes. How to pair all the skill, strength, and wisdom of an adult with all the wonder, creativity, and empathy of a child. How, simply, to live like Jesus."
"Like Christ, children are quick to love, quick to trust, quick to forgive, quick to embrace. They're built for empathy. They feel what others feel. They cry when we cry. They smile when we smile. They laugh when we laugh. All their windows are open and all their doors unlocked. This is atonement: in the garden and on the cross, Christ feels everything we feel."
"To become a child again - to be converted and saved - I'll need to recover that child's mind. I'll need all of his awe, imagination, and love. I'll need to be attuned, amplified, and decentered. But still, vital as this is, it's not enough - or even desirable - for me to simply become a child again. It's not enough for me to just be a son. The world is full of people who've never grown up. To be saved, to be a disciple of Christ, I must learn how to be both an adult and a child. I must learn how to be both a father and a son... This is the mystery of godliness itself: how to be both. How to become an adult, tempered by age and experience and, nonetheless, see the world through a child's eyes. How to pair all the skill, strength, and wisdom of an adult with all the wonder, creativity, and empathy of a child. How, simply, to live like Jesus."
January 17, 2025
Awe, Imagination, Love
Things to remember:
Christ’s arrival as a baby not only dramatically displays the miracle of his condescension, it quietly embodies something crucial about what I must also become in order to be saved.
The kingdom of God is hidden in plain sight. To see it, I just have to see the world as Christ sees it. I have to see the world through his childlike eyes, through the eyes of the Son.
Children are more conscious than adults. Their minds are open rather than closed, big rather than small, soft rather than hard, plastic rather than rigid.
When was the last time I stood in awe of anything? When was the last time I feared and worshipped the marvel that is my God? When was the last time I showed enough wisdom to greet the world with joy like a child?
The mind of a baby, Gopnik suggests, is like a lantern. The mind of an adult is like a spotlight. Lanterns fill the whole room with light. Spotlights single out just one thing. Babies seem to be vividly experiencing everything at once.
This capacity for open and unfiltered receptivity is, Gopnik notes, what we traditionally call awe. “Awe: our sense of the richness and complexity of the university outside our own immediate concerns.
Rather than filtering the world through just our own immediate concerns, awe opens the mind’s aperture wide. Rather than prescreening what’s seen, awe is about seeing whatever is given. Awe is about receiving, not selecting.
Awe, like love, is often difficult and inconvenient. It’s intense and overwhelming. It requires sacrifice and submission. Because awe overwhelms, it asks us to trust and yield control. It asks us to let God prevail. This is the price of admission.
In Greek, nous is the word for “mind” and so, the root meaning of metanoia isn’t to “turn” but simply “to change one’s mind,” or even just “to think differently.” To repent is to think differently.
Christ pushes back against collapse. He stretches his arms wide as eternity, shoulders the weight of inevitable consequences, and makes space for something new.
I imagine I meeting him [Christ] at heaven’s gates. I imagine returning his embrace and showing him something surprising, something entirely new. I show him something I never could have guessed. I show him me.
Traditionally, these gifts were assigned specific symbolic roles. Gold, used for royal crowns, was associated with Christ’s kingship. Frankincense, used for priestly incense, was associated with Christ’s divinity. And myrrh, used for healing and embalming, was associated with Christ’s humanity and mortality.
In one of my favorite stories about these treasures, the wise men use these gifts to test Jesus. “The wise men are said to have offered gold, frankincense, and myrrh,” Richard Trexler recounts, “so as to determine just what the child’s status was. They meant to test the infant. He would take the gold if he was a king, the incense if he was a priest, the myrrh if a doctor. Thus as humans are wont to do, the magi meant to classify the child. Confounding them, Jesus took all three.
This is the mystery of godliness itself: how to be both. How to become an adult, tempered by age and experience, and, nonetheless, see the world through a child’s eyes. How to pair all the skill, strength, and wisdom of an adult with all the wonder, creativity, and empathy of a child. How, simply, to live like Jesus.
Things to remember:
Christ’s arrival as a baby not only dramatically displays the miracle of his condescension, it quietly embodies something crucial about what I must also become in order to be saved.
The kingdom of God is hidden in plain sight. To see it, I just have to see the world as Christ sees it. I have to see the world through his childlike eyes, through the eyes of the Son.
Children are more conscious than adults. Their minds are open rather than closed, big rather than small, soft rather than hard, plastic rather than rigid.
When was the last time I stood in awe of anything? When was the last time I feared and worshipped the marvel that is my God? When was the last time I showed enough wisdom to greet the world with joy like a child?
The mind of a baby, Gopnik suggests, is like a lantern. The mind of an adult is like a spotlight. Lanterns fill the whole room with light. Spotlights single out just one thing. Babies seem to be vividly experiencing everything at once.
This capacity for open and unfiltered receptivity is, Gopnik notes, what we traditionally call awe. “Awe: our sense of the richness and complexity of the university outside our own immediate concerns.
Rather than filtering the world through just our own immediate concerns, awe opens the mind’s aperture wide. Rather than prescreening what’s seen, awe is about seeing whatever is given. Awe is about receiving, not selecting.
Awe, like love, is often difficult and inconvenient. It’s intense and overwhelming. It requires sacrifice and submission. Because awe overwhelms, it asks us to trust and yield control. It asks us to let God prevail. This is the price of admission.
In Greek, nous is the word for “mind” and so, the root meaning of metanoia isn’t to “turn” but simply “to change one’s mind,” or even just “to think differently.” To repent is to think differently.
Christ pushes back against collapse. He stretches his arms wide as eternity, shoulders the weight of inevitable consequences, and makes space for something new.
I imagine I meeting him [Christ] at heaven’s gates. I imagine returning his embrace and showing him something surprising, something entirely new. I show him something I never could have guessed. I show him me.
Traditionally, these gifts were assigned specific symbolic roles. Gold, used for royal crowns, was associated with Christ’s kingship. Frankincense, used for priestly incense, was associated with Christ’s divinity. And myrrh, used for healing and embalming, was associated with Christ’s humanity and mortality.
In one of my favorite stories about these treasures, the wise men use these gifts to test Jesus. “The wise men are said to have offered gold, frankincense, and myrrh,” Richard Trexler recounts, “so as to determine just what the child’s status was. They meant to test the infant. He would take the gold if he was a king, the incense if he was a priest, the myrrh if a doctor. Thus as humans are wont to do, the magi meant to classify the child. Confounding them, Jesus took all three.
This is the mystery of godliness itself: how to be both. How to become an adult, tempered by age and experience, and, nonetheless, see the world through a child’s eyes. How to pair all the skill, strength, and wisdom of an adult with all the wonder, creativity, and empathy of a child. How, simply, to live like Jesus.
December 16, 2024
Adam Miller has a wonderful way of bringing familiar things to a new view. The value in this meditation is the insight it offers into becoming as a child. For the mind of Christ is the mind of a child.
“A child’s mind is like a bird. Light on its feet, it trusts rather than worries.… A child’s mind is like a flower. Pushing toward the sun, it plays rather than works.… A child’s mind is like an eye. Wide open, it sees rather than despises.… A child’s mind is like a servant, attentive it’s single rather than split.”
It is the Christmas season that we are reminded of the refreshing power of awe and wonder at who we worship and how He entered the world. I hope I can be more child-like.
“A child’s mind is like a bird. Light on its feet, it trusts rather than worries.… A child’s mind is like a flower. Pushing toward the sun, it plays rather than works.… A child’s mind is like an eye. Wide open, it sees rather than despises.… A child’s mind is like a servant, attentive it’s single rather than split.”
It is the Christmas season that we are reminded of the refreshing power of awe and wonder at who we worship and how He entered the world. I hope I can be more child-like.
December 18, 2024
A book like this is dangerous: it can make the reader think that with its small size and cover scene at the manger it is going to be a bit of seasonal feel-good reflection and cheer. But that characterization fails to capture the real work that theologians like Miller accomplish in a book like this, right here and right now. And that is the work of creating all things new through the act of their own reading, thinking, and writing.
You can read summary after summary about what this book is and what it's saying, but like all of the best books, the only true solution is to turn on the light and read it, all the while thinking for oneself.
You can read summary after summary about what this book is and what it's saying, but like all of the best books, the only true solution is to turn on the light and read it, all the while thinking for oneself.
December 26, 2024
I've loved everything I've read by Adam Miller and this short Christmas book was no different. Here, Miller ponders about how awe, imagination, and love. He talks about how we need to have the mind of a child in order to have the mind of Christ. Along the way, he describes several Christmas-related photos from his past and share insights that are buried within these old images. Overall, a beautifully-written, thought-provoking, reflection on Christ and our celebration of Him during the Christmas season.
January 5, 2025
This book and author are really unique. This is not what I had in mind when I picked this book to buy. I thought it was going to be more about the baby Jesus at his birth and him as he was as a child. It's about the child, Jesus, and children in general and becoming like them. That doesn't sound bad, but I think the author was too philosophical for me in the way he thinks and how he wrote this book. I understood some things I think, but most of it I didn't. Maybe I'll like and understand it when I read it later in my life.
December 5, 2024
Imagine the Unseen
I seem unable to articulate in writing my responses, in-the-moments-while-reading, and thereafter. Words like unseen, imagine, unseeable, unimaginable, foolish, real, familiar, fresh … attempt to assemble from jumble to order.
‘Tis of little consequence for a review.
Of consequence: attestation of an experience influential, moving, memorable and which bears repeating.
I seem unable to articulate in writing my responses, in-the-moments-while-reading, and thereafter. Words like unseen, imagine, unseeable, unimaginable, foolish, real, familiar, fresh … attempt to assemble from jumble to order.
‘Tis of little consequence for a review.
Of consequence: attestation of an experience influential, moving, memorable and which bears repeating.
January 20, 2025
This little book is a gem. It's full of profound insights about how Christ's coming to the world as a child points the way for us to become more fit for the kingdom of God by being more childlike. Not just more humble but more open to learning, more susceptible to wonder about God's world, and more pliable in bending our will to His. A definite keeper and one I will add to my yearly Christmas reading list.
December 22, 2025
A quick read that was impactful of your life during Christmas over the years. It was a reminder that my babies will not stay little for all these Christmas’s, the magic of Santa, giving, the chaos, and joy.
•”Christ became a child to save me.
But to be saved by Christ, I too must become a child
again.”
•”The mind of Christ is the mind of a child.
To see the world through a child's eyes is to glimpse the
mind of God.”
•”To repent: to change my mind for Christ's.”
•”Christ became a child to save me.
But to be saved by Christ, I too must become a child
again.”
•”The mind of Christ is the mind of a child.
To see the world through a child's eyes is to glimpse the
mind of God.”
•”To repent: to change my mind for Christ's.”
February 19, 2025
Excellent. Reads just as you’d expect a Miller book to read. The message of the book can be summed up in the following from page 12:
In the end, this may be the only dependable gauge of conversion, the only honest measure of whether I’m filled with Spirit and have begun a new life in Christ: when I opened my eyes this morning, did I see the world with a child’s eyes?
In the end, this may be the only dependable gauge of conversion, the only honest measure of whether I’m filled with Spirit and have begun a new life in Christ: when I opened my eyes this morning, did I see the world with a child’s eyes?
December 19, 2025
Jesus tells us that we have to become like children to see the kingdom of God. And scriptures tell us that Jesus has to be born a child in order to save us. So maybe child-like-ness is where the human and the divine meet. There characteristics of children and Christ that I had never considered together in this way, or thought to be divine, until now: Awe, Imagination, and Love.
December 24, 2025
Only 3 ⭐️ because this genre isn’t really what I enjoy reading. Overall I enjoyed this one! It wasn’t quite as “Christmassy” as I expected, but it’s a great read at the start of the Christmas season and a great reminder of childlike wonder. I could read this every year and take something different away each time.
January 3, 2026
I've loved most everything I have read from Adam Miller. This is the best processing of what it means to be a child according to Christ's command that I have read. to have Awe, Imagination, and to Love, or as he says it at one point - to be attuned, amplified, and decentered. I want to work on toning back my ego and letting more needs of others in based on this book.
December 9, 2024
We've all heard that we need to become as little children, but what does that really mean. Through a series of Christmas photographs and scriptures Adam Miller once again explains difficult concepts that are much deeper than we once supposed in simple language. Deep thinking is required.
December 7, 2025
I love the way Adam paints ideas that come from his higher way of thinking in a framework simple enough for even me to understand. I loved his thoughts about Christmas and how to be both childlike and an adult
December 29, 2025
I really liked this book, I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as a Christmas book. It does talk about Christmas pictures and some parts of the Christmas story, but it is really about how we can become like little children… what God asks us to do.
December 5, 2024
I love this book.
I bought it expecting a nice read that'll get me thinking about Christmas time and whatnot, but I came away with so much more. It's narrated through the author's Christmas experiences, but it's really not a Christmas book.
Rather, it's a theological look at how we can become more like the children Christ implored us to emulate. Miller explores the positive qualities of children and draws parallels to godhood, thus building a bridge for our path toward becoming more Christlike.
I bought it expecting a nice read that'll get me thinking about Christmas time and whatnot, but I came away with so much more. It's narrated through the author's Christmas experiences, but it's really not a Christmas book.
Rather, it's a theological look at how we can become more like the children Christ implored us to emulate. Miller explores the positive qualities of children and draws parallels to godhood, thus building a bridge for our path toward becoming more Christlike.
December 15, 2024
This was a wonderful book to read at Christmastime. Loved the inspirational insights in the child Jesus…and for me as a father, my own children.
December 20, 2024
great book on Christ
Liked the book. Great to read around Christmas. Can read in one or two sittings. Merry Christmas to the promised child
Liked the book. Great to read around Christmas. Can read in one or two sittings. Merry Christmas to the promised child
December 21, 2024
I couldn’t put this down. I already want to reread it because my brain couldn’t fully process the goodness.
December 25, 2024
This book contains random thoughts and anecdotes about Christ, Christmas, and childlike traits. Although a few insights were valuable, overall, it was just meh.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews