Christmas With the ChosenSample

In the previous devotional, we said that in many ways, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus ended up in a stable for practical reasons born of geopolitical circumstances. But please underline three very important words: in many ways.

Yes, yes: folks were swarming Bethlehem due to an Empire-wide census, all of which resulted in “no room in the inn.”

But what if the way things unfolded was exactly how God wanted it?

What if he actually orchestrated it?

Or, if you like, what if an inhospitable world’s “no vacancy” curveball was a pitch God was quite happy to hit to drive home a point or two?

Because it’s awfully hard not to think that the stable setting was perfect.

Think about it: hundreds of years before the arrival of Jesus, the Prophet Isaiah told the world what to look for when scanning the horizon for the Savior — “You’ll know he’s on his way when you hear news of a virgin suddenly finding herself pregnant” — before tossing in the altogether important addition that you’ve read just today: “And you’ll know when he arrives, because the circumstances of his birth won’t be much of anything — if not even embarrassing.”

The old prophet could have just as easily cut to the chase and said, “You’ll be tempted to go looking in palace hallways or the Holy of Holies for an altogether intimidating man dressed in robes or religious garb — but you’ll want to look instead for a wiggly, wrinkled infant at the feet of an impoverished teenage couple, all three of them tucked away in a dung-strewn stable.”

When all is said and done, “no room in the inn” allowed everyone then — and us today — to know just who exactly Jesus is.

As the old Apostle once said: “He made himself nothing,” and in part so that we would clearly know when our everything had finally come.

The humble stable is perfect.

But can we go one step further? If Jesus had come the world’s way in the way the world expected — as some towering, terrifying individual — would anyone ever have dared draw near?

Would you dare draw near?

But to be called each Christmas to a ruddy and ramshackle stable, that you might stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a wide- and wild-eyed couple as you all behold a gurgling, giddy baby?

That’s not terrifying.

It’s moving.

And oddly inviting.