Posts Tagged: Christ born in a stable

“BARN BABY!”

On December 25, 2017 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

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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