Luke 2:6-7
"While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped Him in cloths and placed Him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them."
I want to strip away the Christmas cards for a minute. The clean stable. The peaceful animals. The golden light. The reality was harder than that. Mary was nine months pregnant. She had traveled eighty miles over rough terrain. She arrived in Bethlehem exhausted and there was nowhere to stay. Every room was full. Every bed was taken. The town was swollen with people who had come for the census and there was no space for the woman carrying the Savior of the world.
So they found a place where animals were kept. A cave. A shed. A lower room of a house where the livestock was brought in at night. The floor was dirt. The air smelled like hay and dung. And there, in the feed trough, Mary laid her newborn Son. The King of kings. The One through whom all things were made. Wrapped in strips of cloth and laid in a box where horses eat.
This is the God we serve. The God who does not need a palace. The God who chooses a manger. He did not come into the world with fanfare and red carpets. He came in the dark, in the dirt, in the place no one wanted. And He did it on purpose. Because the God who created everything chose to enter it at its lowest point. He did not come to the top. He came to the bottom. So that no one, anywhere, could ever say that God is too holy to meet them in their mess.
How many times have I felt like there is no room for me. No room for my grief. No room for my questions. No room for my broken, unpolished, unput-together self in the presence of a holy God. And then I look at the manger and I realize that God chose the place with no room. He chose the overflow. He chose the unwanted space and He made it holy by His presence.
If God was comfortable in a feeding trough, He is comfortable in your chaos. If He was at home among the animals, He is at home among your anxiety. He does not need you to clean up before He arrives. He arrived in the mess. He was born in it. The manger is proof that there is no place too low for God to go. No place He will not enter. No place where His presence cannot make holy ground.
"She wrapped Him in cloths and placed Him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them."
Today I am making room. Not in my schedule. In my heart. I am clearing out the clutter of performance and pretense and I am making a space that looks like a manger. Rough. Humble. Unadorned. And I am laying my need there. My need for God. My need for grace. My need for a Savior who was not afraid of dirt. He is here. In the low places. In the no-room places. And He is enough.
With the eleventh candle flickering in a humble space, I am learning that God does not need my best room. He just needs a place to lay His love. Claire