Although it looks nice on a Christmas card, it is not really much fun to put your baby to sleep in a horse feeding-trough because there is nowhere else except the dirty floor. It must be a dreadful thing for a mother to feel that the world has no room for her baby.
How it must have cheered Mary when the rough shepherds came bursting in, all breathless and excited, saying that they had seen a vision of angels up there on the hillside and had been told beyond all doubt that this little child was really God. Could they please kneel and spend a moment there with him?
How the people snoring comfortably in the inn next door would have laughed to have seen the sight of the shepherds kneeling on the stable floor! Why, it was as good as a play! But this is how God chose to make God’s entrance into the world.
This is the miracle we celebrate at Christmas. I hope you will worship with us in person or online on the Fourth Sunday of Advent this Sunday and for our Christmas Eve worship. Let us rejoice together as we celebrate the glad entrance of God into this needful, weary world as we tread through these sacred and significant days.
In the name of the One who can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,
Bruce Jones, Pastor and Co-Creator,
Imagine Church of the Carolinas
