In My Stable
I love celebrating communion during Christmas. Communion, our remembrance of why He came, the life we get to live because of the life He sacrificed. And Christmas, the season where we remember how Jesus started that journey on earth. How He came as an innocent, vulnerable, powerless baby to the lowliest, stinkiest, unruliest, dirtiest location. A baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
Side note, I always pictured swaddling clothes as loose blankets flowing around the all-but-nakey baby. But now that I’ve had 5 kids, DUDE swaddling clothes are meant to wrap that baby up TIGHT! Like you don’t even know if that baby’s got clothes on or just more blankets, because that baby is cocooned with his arms pinned to his sides! He ain’t goin’ NOWHERE. Just in case you were wondering. Swaddling. The Bible sees you, moms-of-newborns. The Bible SEES YOU.
It is fascinating to me that Jesus was born in a stable. Laid in a manger. Like we already know it’s not a palace. Not a hospital. But like, it’s a STABLE. It’s dusty and dirty and SMELLY I’m telling YOU. Like surely that innkeeper didn’t offer to sweep out the animal poop before they offered for Joseph & Mary to kick it in there. Definitely not sterile. Definitely not clean. Definitely not ideal. Definitely not what we would want, not where we would want, not anything that we would want.
But that is where God chose to meet us, where He chose to meet all of humanity. He came to the poop-ridden hay-covered, allergy-inducing, not-at-all-peaceful, outcast last resort space on that oh-so-totally-not-at-all-silent night.
And I think that is where He still chooses to meet us. In the “stables” of our hearts. In the dusty, dirty, smelly places of my heart. In the I-didn’t-get-a-chance-to-clean-out-all-the-poop places of my life. In the I’m-so-sorry-if-I’d-known-I-was-having-company-I-would-have-tidied-it-up place of my choices. In the loud and unruly and wild and untamed places of my heart. He chooses again and again and again to come to my stable. To start in my lowliest least ideal place. To walk with me in the last place on earth I want anyone let alone the God of the Universe to see.
God started in a stable. And given the choice, He will show up in our stables every single time. Because THAT is what He came to do. He came to our places of rejection and sorrow and grief. He came to the places where we have been abandoned and turned away from. He shows up in the places we cannot even look at ourselves. He came to bind up our wounds and bear the weight of our sins. He stands in the middle of our storms and our winds and our waves and says, “Peace. Be still.”
And then everything that has never bowed, all the things that have knocked us over time after time, every place that has not listened to MY frail voice begging for mercy, crying out for the love of God please just stop, ALL of those things are stilled. One by one, piece by piece, stable by stable, they each and all bow to the name of Jesus. Because when that God is FOR US, there is NONE that can stand against us. There are places where we cannot stand against the things that stand against us, but GOD DOES.
Because “He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. But HE WAS WOUNDED FOR OUR TRANSGRESSIONS, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, AND BY HIS STRIPES WE ARE HEALED.” (Isaiah 53:3-5)
Where is the stable in your heart today? Invite Jesus to come freshly to that place. Don’t tidy it up, don’t hide it, don’t try to make it ok. Just let it be the dirty stinky smelly dusty poopy place that it is. It’s where He WANTS to meet you. It’s where we’ll find Him time after time after time.
God chooses to meet us in our stable.
*To view this same message in the flesh, go to this link and start at 12:57: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxnMh2bwpjk
