I love this week. The anticipation is building. The countdown has begun. You just wake up with a little extra bounce in your step. Even the kids get up easier. (GLORY!)
I don't think it's a coincidence that this is the most anticipated time of the year by most. (I also know it's a very difficult time for some.) I think it's just a taste of the anticipation that has been felt since the beginning of time. And a glimpse of the anticipation we still have of meeting the very One whose birthday we will celebrate this week.
But if we're not careful...we'll miss it. Each year as I read the Christmas story in Luke, I seem to identify with someone different. This year, I can so identify with the innkeeper. Bless his heart...sometimes we're just too hard on him. We say, "How in the world could he not make room for a young, very pregnant, teenage girl?"
Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. It was a very busy time. Augustus had decreed that a census should be taken. There was lots of excitement, preparation and hustle and bustle and this poor innkeeper was just trying to keep up with the busyness that surrounded him. There was so much to do. After all, his inn was full! Can't we relate? All he had to offer was his stable. At least he offered that. Sometimes, I'm reluctant to even offer if it's not ideal.
Don't you just wish you could go back there and be one of the many flies that swarmed that smelly stable... Mary is absolutely exhausted after travelling all day. She's probably thankful to even have a place to lay down. She probably didn't even noticed the hard ground, the awful stench in the air or the itchy hay. She's just pondering all that is ahead. Can you imagine what all she must be thinking? Sometimes I think that's why God uses children so often. They simply trust. They're not cynical. They exhibit that childlike faith that God desires and can use.
Max Lucado describes it best I think: (God Came Near)
"Majesty in the midst of the mundane. Holiness in the filth of sheep manure and sweat. Divinity entering the world on the floor of a stable, through the womb of a teenager and in the presence of a carpenter. Mary looks at the prunish, red face of the baby. Her son. Her Lord. His golden throne room had been abandoned in favor of a dirty sheep pen. And worshiping angels had been replaced with kind but bewildered shepherds.
Meanwhile, the city hums. The merchants are unaware that God has visited their planet. The innkeeper would never believe that he had just sent God into the cold. And the people would scoff at anyone who told them the Messiah lay in the arms of a teenager on the outskirts of their village. They were all too busy to consider the possibility.
Those who missed His majesty's arrival that night missed it not because of evil acts or malice; no, they missed it because they simply weren't looking.
Little has changed in the last two thousand years, has it?"
I'm trying my best to learn from this innkeeper. Although, my inn is full, I don't want to overlook the possibilities right before me. If I've learned anything at all about God, it is that He does things exactly opposite than we would expect. It doesn't include fanfare, Ritz Carltons, parades, CEOs and neon signs. It involves ordinary people, smelly stables, and giving us His most precious possession so that the impossible gap between blameless and sinful could be filled. Simply amazing.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!
My favorite Christmas song this year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdRcK3vN2RE
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