by Jerry Senn
“Michael Card writes of a tradition his family observed every Christmas. They go at night to a barn and there read by candlelight the story of Jesus’ birth. He writes about the experience:
“The beginning in that dirty stable is one of the greatest mysteries of the plainness and the greatness of Jesus, the grime meets the glory. Wise men with gold in their hands and shepherds with sheep dung on their shoes. A smelly stable below and a shinning star above. The birth, the lamb who became the fiercest lion.
The shabbiness of this setting reminds us of that other shabby place Jesus chooses everyday to be born: the human heart, a place more filthy and cold that any stable” (Immanuel, by Michael Card).
The apostle Paul said this about Jesus’ birth:
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, ever death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ in Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:5-11, ESV).
His lowly birth is God’s way of saying, I have come to save you from sin, but I’m coming my way, not yours’. He grew to manhood with a blemish on his soul so he could be the one and only sacrifice for your sins and mine. No room in the inn, or the grave, but there was room at the cross, and he invites everyone to come to that cross and receive forgiveness. He’s knocking at the door of our hearts this very day!!!