A Messy Plan (Christmas Eve addition)

Photo by Hoshino Ai on Unsplash

Away in a manger, no crib for a bed. No room in the inn. I don’t mean to be irreverent or anything, but what kind of plan was that? We claim God’s presence is always with us waiting for us to receive love and hope. God waited hundreds of years from the time of Abraham until Jesus came on the scene. You’d think in all that waiting God might have had time to make some hotel reservations! 

Then again, maybe that was the plan. Because on The First Nowell, the angels said, this will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.  This will be a sign – a dirty stable, not a beautifully appointed hotel fit for a king. This will be a sign came the good news to the shepherds, the outsiders, the night shift doing the dirty work who were unfit to worship in the temple. The sign of good news was given to them, not to the powerful who knew how to make kings of their own. 

This will be a sign – No room in the inn. Born amid the dirt. Swaddled in rags. Outcasts the first to know. Maybe that was the plan. 

My most memorable Christmas Eve, I was serving a small, forgotten church. The poinsettias we could afford created a sparse display. The perfect-looking manger to hold Jesus was lost to the cobwebs of time. So we had a mess of straw tumbling out of a galvanized tub, where a proud 5-year old dressed as Mary laid a baby doll. Our choir of four replaced a heavenly host. We grumbled a little discontent – wishing to witness a customary grand display of color and pageantry – even as the realization sunk in. We want to see God in grandeur. So we create a scene of glory that appeals to us and forget the messy simplicity into which God is born. We even want God to be born out of the grandeur of our hearts, proud and dignified. That night, our messy manger and simplicity were just perfect. 

Because Jesus was not born in grandeur. Neither is Love born from the pride of our hearts. The love of God is born in naked vulnerability. The stable is messy and dark, dusty and dirty. There is nothing to love about it except the baby that comes to be loved. It is the love born that transforms the manger into something glorious, something beautiful.

I couldn’t find a dignified manger to hold Jesus that evening. So, we had a perfect mess, like our messy lives. Lives we want to make perfect but are oh so messy in different ways. Through choices we make. Through things that happen to us by the decisions of others. The mess of grief or the mess of shame. We might be tidy on the outside, but inside there is no grandeur. There is nothing spectacular. Just these messy, dusty hearts – vulnerable places that are exactly where God delivers Love. 

May you experience peace born of the quiet surrender to Love this season.

In this together…