Maybe the Manger Isn’t What We Think It Is

Christmas Eve 2016 was our first with our son and his new wife and I’d made all the preparations and plans for the perfect day. Yet, that Christmas Eve found me standing in my kitchen with ugly tears ruining my makeup as I struggled to hold all my perfect plans together. Nothing was right. Everything was wrong and I wanted Christmas to be over.

When Christmas is supposed to be filled with joy and hope in anticipation of celebrating the birth of our savior, how on earth do we get to the point of just wanting it to be over? 

Maybe it’s because we have, deep inside our hearts, bought into an image of Christmas that sets us up for disappointment.

Have you noticed that nativity scenes all have one particular element in common?  In the center, there is always a calm and serene Joseph and Mary looking down at their newborn in reverent awe.

Mary never looks like she just had a baby. Joseph doesn’t look like a harried husband trying to find someplace for his wife to give birth.

The image is pristine, calm, precious, tranquil – perfect.

It’s against the backdrop of this perfect image that we experience Christmas. We internalize this idea that Jesus comes into perfect. He doesn’t come into messy chaos.

When our lives don’t resemble this perfect image, we find ourselves standing in our kitchen with a mountain of Kleenex thinking, “I can’t wait for Christmas to be over.”

This, my friends, breaks the heart of God because harboring beliefs that Jesus will only come into perfect denies the message of the manger.

Christmas is God saying to us – I know your life is a mess. It’s why you need me. Why you need Jesus. Why I am sending my beloved son into your world. In the middle of whatever it is that you think is too messy for me to handle. Try me. I know messy.

Nothing about the birth of Jesus was an accident. God hand-picked everything, down to the smallest detail. If Jesus was laid in a manger, God had a reason for it.   

Let’s take a short journey as we re-imagine that first Christmas and discover the treasure of the manger.

The Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. Everyone was required to register for the census in their own ancestral towns. Joseph, a descendant of David, returned to Bethlehem.

Under normal circumstances, Bethlehem’s population was roughly 1000 people. As hundreds, possibly thousands of additional people descended upon it for the census, the resources of this small village were quickly overrun. With no accommodations, no running water, no port-o-potties, and everyone with their donkeys or other beasts of burden, Bethlehem was chaotic.

Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem began in Nazareth, approximately 100 miles away. The average man could travel that distance in approximately three to four days if he walked at a pace of four miles an hour. Ya’ll a 15 minute mile is a jog for me. But even at four miles an hour, which is unlikely given the terrain, that would have been a hard eight hours a day.

Joseph did not make this trip by himself. He had a pregnant Mary with him who was most likely not keeping a four mile pace for 8 hours a day. She was probably on a donkey – but good grief – ladies, imagine being pregnant and crossing the rocky, arid, dusty desert. On a donkey. For days.

They arrived in Bethlehem, dusty and tired from the long journey, to discover there was no vacancy at the inn. Mary went into labor shortly after they arrived and suddenly Joseph was frantically seeking shelter, a safe place for Mary to give birth.

We arrive at the image of a barn or stable because of the reference to a manger. In Israel, the location was far more likely a cave, or grotto, in a hillside. A typical place for shepherds to shelter their livestock.

In this cave, Mary gave birth and wrapped Jesus in strips of cloth they had carried with them on the journey. Then she laid him in a manger – a stone structure about 3 feet long, 18 inches wide with a 2 foot deep well that had been chiseled out to hold feed. The place where, earlier that day, sheep had circled eating their breakfast. 

When I imagine this nativity scene, I don’t see pristine, calm, and tranquil. I don’t even see reverent. I see chaotic, dusty, disheveled, weary, frantic, and making-do. It’s dark, dank, and stinky. Cold and uncomfortable.

This nativity scene isn’t likely to sell many Christmas cards. It isn’t warm and fuzzy.

But it is all the ways we will at some point describe some situation we are going through in life. The manger is God’s great love meeting us in our places of deepest hurt, greatest need, and most overwhelming chaos with a life-altering promise as the angels proclaimed,

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14).

This promise of peace is not a promise of the absence of hard, uncomfortable, stinky life circumstances. It is a promise of total well-being and security that comes with God’s presence. God promises it at the manger and Jesus promises it just before his crucifixion.

“Peace I leave with you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27)

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33)

Jesus’ life is bookended by this promise of peace.

The manger promises it.  The cross promises it.

When you contemplate the manger this year, don’t see pristine and perfect. See a love that meets you right where you are in the middle of hard, uncomfortable and stinky circumstances. See a love that promises to never leave you nor forsake you. See a love that will sustain you through trials and comfort you through grief.

See a love that invites you to come and know the promised peace of Jesus.