Christmas Eve began this morning with all the children jumping for joy. “The presents are coming, the presents are coming,” shout the three little children with the wee little toddler scrambling behind. The excitement filled their little tiny minds while they couldn’t wait to see what was to be had below the tree. Could it be, the little gifts I had longed for would fill me with such glee, expresses the confident 8 year old. The four little boys toddled around waiting anxiously for the unwrapped gifts below the tree. As the long day passed, they waited with immense patience checking off their list:

1. Christmas Eve dinner @ 4pm

2. Christmas Eve service at church @ 6:30pm

3. Rush home and pass out gifts, eat snacks and unwrap @ 8pm

The tearing of the Christmas paper began to fill the house with four little boys hovering over each pile of gifts.

This year we decided to not put such an emphasis on gifts for us adults as we want to remember the real meaning of Christmas. “Gifts and stockings are okay, but Jesus is the real reason we have Christmas Day.” As a family we decided we would do more meaningful, thought felt gifts and that is exactly what we did.

We have gifts on Christmas Eve and Santa of course brings the stockings on Christmas morning. Teaching the young, inquiring minds that gifts and stockings are okay is not always an easy distinction for the almost teenager, 8 year old dreamer, and the 5 and 18 month old wigglers. Their priorities are tagged with telling all their friends when they return to school about all the technelogically savy gifts they received. But to their grandparents, it’s more imporant that they pass down a legacy of faith seperating the joy of giving with Christ’s birth. The important disctinction they long to pass from generation to generation has been well established.

My father has always read the Christmas story before we opened gifts to remind us why we have been blessed to give and receive. This Christmas my dad read a snippet of by Max Lucado and this is what is wrote:

It Began in a Manger (Christmas)

by Max Lucado • March 22

Curious, this royal throne room. No tapestries covering the windows. No velvet garments on the courtesans. And, instead of a golden scepter, the king holds a crudely whittled olive-wood rattle.

Curious, the sounds in the court. Cows munching, hooves crunching, a mother humming, a babe nursing.

It could have begun anywhere, the story of the king. But, curiously, it began in a manger. Step into the doorway, peek through the window.

He is here!

The Arrival

The noise and the bustle began earlier than usual in the village. As night gave way to dawn, people were already on the streets. Vendors were positioning themselves on the corners of the most heavily traveled avenues. Store owners were unlocking the doors to their shops. Children were awakened by the excited barking of the street dogs and the complaints of donkeys pulling carts.

The owner of the inn had awakened earlier than most in the town. After all, the inn was full, all the beds taken. Every available mat or blanket had been put to use. Soon all the customers would be stirring and there would be a lot of work to do.

One’s imagination is kindled thinking about the conversation of the innkeeper and his family at the breakfast table. Did anyone mention the arrival of the young couple the night before? Did anyone comment on the pregnancy of the girl on the donkey? Perhaps. Perhaps someone raised the subject. But, at best, it was raised, not discussed. There was nothing that novel about them. They were, possibly, one of several families turned away that night.

Besides, who had time to talk about them when there was so much excitement in the air? Augustus did the economy of Bethlehem a favor when he decreed that a census should be taken. Who could remember when such commerce had hit the village?

No, it is doubtful that anyone mentioned the couple’s arrival or wondered about the condition of the girl. They were too busy. The day was upon them. The day’s bread had to be made. The morning’s chores had to be done. There was too much to do to imagine that the impossible had occurred.

God had entered the world as a baby.

Yet, were someone to chance upon the sheep stable on the outskirts of Bethlehem that morning, what a peculiar scene they would behold.

The stable stinks like all stables do. The stench of urine, dung, and sheep reeks pungently in the air. The ground is hard, the hay scarce. Cobwebs cling to the ceiling and a mouse scurries across the dirt floor.

A more lowly place of birth could not exist.

Off to one side sit a group of shepherds. They sit silently on the floor, perhaps perplexed, perhaps in awe, no doubt in amazement. Their night watch had been interrupted by an explosion of light from heaven and a symphony of angels. God goes to those who have time to hear him—so on this cloudless night he went to simple shepherds.

Near the young mother sits the weary father. If anyone is dozing, he is. He can’t remember the last time he sat down. And now that the excitement has subsided a bit, now that Mary and the baby are comfortable, he leans against the wall of the stable and feels his eyes grow heavy. He still hasn’t figured it all out. The mystery of the event still puzzles him. But he hasn’t the energy to wrestle with the questions. What’s important is that the baby is fine and that Mary is safe. As sleep comes, he remembers the name the angel told him to use . . . Jesus. “We will call him Jesus.”

Wide awake is Mary. My, how young she looks! Her head rests on the soft leather of Joseph’s saddle. The pain has been eclipsed by wonder. She looks into the face of the baby. Her son. Her Lord. His Majesty. At this point in history, the human being who best understands who God is and what he is doing is a teenage girl in a smelly stable. She can’t take her eyes off him. Somehow Mary knows she is holding God. So this is he. She remembers the words of the angel,
“His kingdom will never end.”

He looks anything but a king. His face is prunish and red. His cry, though strong and healthy, is still the helpless and piercing cry of a baby. And he is absolutely dependent upon Mary for his well-being.

Majesty in the midst of the mundane. Holiness in the filth of sheep manure and sweat. Divinity entering the world on the floor of a stable, through the womb of a teenager and in the presence of a carpenter.

She touches the face of the infant-God. How long was your journey!

This baby had overlooked the universe. These rags keeping him warm were the robes of eternity. His golden throne room had been abandoned in favor of a dirty sheep pen. And worshiping angels had been replaced with kind but bewildered shepherds.

Meanwhile, the city hums. The merchants are unaware that God has visited their planet. The innkeeper would never believe that he had just sent God into the cold. And the people would scoff at anyone who told them the Messiah lay in the arms of a teenager on the outskirts of their village. They were all too busy to consider the possibility.

Those who missed His Majesty’s arrival that night missed it not because of evil acts or malice; no, they missed it because they simply weren’t looking.

Little has changed in the last two thousand years, has it?

While my dad finished this story I was sipping my tea in awe of what it would possibly be like in Mary’s shoes. What would it feel like to have a King as your son? Teaching the Creator of the world right from wrong as a young toddler. Holding his hands, knowing they created you yet giving birth to the Son of Man. These questions struck me to the core. The entirety of the story of Christ baffles my mind. “Why? For me? How come?”  The unanswered questions reinstate in my ignorant mind that Christ did come as a babe in a lowly manger, suffered persecutation for claiming to be the Risen Son of Man, and dying a painful death suffering ALL the sins of the world upon his lifeless body. Yet he conquored death, saved humanity and gave the free gift of salvation for those who want it…….

What a powerful God we have!

Enjoy your gifts this Christmas and remind yourself this Eve before christmas morning, the journey of Mary and Joseph took on a donkey to bear a child in a stable. The questions and uncertainity they held must have been a story worth hearing….

Merry Christmas!!!