Meet Me at the Manger - Christmas Devotion

The manger may be one of the strangest symbols of all time. It's a feed trough. Maybe crudely chiseled from stone, probably cobbled together from rough wood. It's a farm implement: not much to look at, not worth a whole lot, scarcely noticed unless it needs to be filled up or cleaned out. Yet this feed trough is transformed into a cradle in one sense and a throne in another sense. For women and men of faith it signals the arrival of the world's long awaited and much anticipated king.

The manger is to the birth of Jesus what the cross is to the death and resurrection of Jesus. It's foolishness to some but the deepest kind of wisdom to others. It is a sign of weakness to the cynical but a symbol of subversive strength to the hopeful. The manger, like the cross, reveals something very profound about the heart of our God.

And what an odd God we have. This God sends His son into the world through a rather ordinary peasant couple. Joseph and Mary are sent to a backwater little town simply because the Emperor on the other side of world wants to flex his power and tax his citizens more efficiently. The idea of a new Mom giving birth out in the barn because there was no room--because they couldn't afford the kind of bribe that might have allowed their son to be born in the warmth of a hotel, offends us. And then to send a parade of empty handed shepherds to visit only to be followed by strange, foreign astrologers—bearing relatively useless gifts for an infant—this defies any plot we could have come up with ourselves.

It is all just a little too odd to get our minds around. And yet there is a power in the unexpected that draws us back again and again. Remove the Magi and the shepherds and the angels. Put aside Quirinius and Caesar and Herod. Ignore everything in the story but the miracle of Mary's pregnancy and the stark reality of that manger turned cradle and there is enough there to set us back on our heels in wonder and awe.

Jesus was born in a manger rather than a palace to make sure we understood that God was as much on the side of the poor and powerless as he was on the side of the rich and powerful.

The King of Kings began his reign in an out-of-the-way stable to show us that God can take what is overlooked and ordinary and use it for extraordinary purposes.
The Prince of Peace starts out in a feed trough, attended to by hard living shepherds, so that we'd never lose sight of the fact no one is beyond God's reach—that God is always able to use those who make themselves available, those who respond to the invitation.

Our hope and prayer is that you will respond to this invitation to come and join us this Christmas Eve to worship the Babe of Bethlehem.

I know that for me, when the lights are dimmed, the candles are lit, and the voices are joined in song the awe and wonder wash over me every time. There is the manger, placed up front and center, and I as consider all that it means, I'm overwhelmed by the mystery of God's deep and abiding love. This Christmas we'd like nothing more than to share that mystery and that love with you.

Tim