“BARN BABY!”
I was about eleven years old, and it was Christmas morning. I woke up ready to inhale breakfast and open presents.
Unfortunately, there was a very large glitch in my plan—my dad.
Like many young children, I had always believed that parents never got sick. My mom disabused me of this childish fantasy in a hurry. “Your dad has come down with some kind of virus. Could you do the feeding of the cattle this morning?”
I don’t remember saying anything to my mom. Maybe I did. If so, Mom, even though you’re long gone, could you please forgive me?
Whether I said anything to Mom or not, I had plenty to say on the hundred-or-so yards between the house and the barn. They may have been questions in form, but in content, they were accusations. “How could Dad get sick on Christmas Day! I think it was deliberate! And why did cows have to eat and drink on Christmas Day? Let them wait ‘til tomorrow!” I seem to remember even calling God to account for this tragic matter of me having to do the feeding on this particular morning. I was determined to do the feeding, and draw water from the well for the cattle in record time.
Our barn was a ramshackle affair with a small door which was opened and closed with a two-by-four dropped into a notch on the door. I lay my hand on the latch to the door, still fuming, and had an immediate encounter with The Divine Mystery of the Incarnation. I had never been spoken to by God before, and have only rarely been spoken to so directly since. (Or, perhaps, I just don’t listen very well.) Certainly, I was in no particularly spiritual frame of mind.
But as I grabbed that latch, I heard—as clearly as I have ever heard anything—God saying, “It was in a place like this that My Son was born.”
That, and nothing more.
My hand was frozen to the latch, but not from the cold. I couldn’t move for what seemed a very long time.
Finally, I slowly lifted the latch, as if I were lifting a chalice. I reverently opened the door, and eased the latch down beside it. I slowly scooped the cattle’s feed out of the barrels and into their mangers. I gave each of them some extra feed. I patted them on their muzzles as they ate. I very slowly broke apart several bales of hay, carefully spreading it in another part of the manger.
I went outside and drew water from the well. Cattle can drink a lot of water, especially right after they’ve eaten. I made trip after trip from the well to their water tank, and considered it an honor to do so. Before I left the barn, I wished the cows a Merry Christmas.
My heart and mind and behavior are often more like our ramshackle barn, than they are like a Currier and Ives print. Barns are not sanitary places.
And yet . . .
And yet . . .
And yet, it was a stable in which Jesus was born. Perhaps that wasn’t an accident. Perhaps God was making a point. No one, no one, is too unsanitary to be saved. No one is too messed up for God.
No one!
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