On Empty Mangers and Finding Jesus

The first Christmas we are married, my parents give us Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus.  These little unbreakable people, abiding quietly in a woodsy creche (that looks little like what historians tell us that first stable resembled), these were the playthings of my childhood Christmas memories. 

Each year my parents add a piece - a shepherd, the wisemen, their camels, an angel, then the camels again when their wiry legs melt in the unbearable heat of a summer attic.

Ironic, I think, that the dessert animals are the only ones damaged.  

They keep giving them, one or two a year, until we tell them there is no room in the inn. I think they're beautiful, but what I love about them most is that they're plastic.  The perfect intersection of beauty and functionality, I think, placed low for little hands to enjoy.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when those little hands laid a certain member of Nativity scene on the kitchen floor, brought in with some great purpose, no doubt, and somehow left lifeless on the big slate colored tile just in front of the oven. 

But when I stumbled through the kitchen that afternoon, already on my last fuse, and attempting to step over the pink stool and the ponies and the popcorn kernels littering the floor, blinded by the heap of laundry in my arms, I didn't notice who was lying there until the soft center of my foot came down hard and sharp on his pointy, plastic, little body. 

And let me tell you, my response was less than holy. 

Anger shot through me, at whatever I had just stepped on, at the person who left it there, at myself for the lack of clean going on around here lately. 

And then I looked down.  

And I smiled (as in smile-so-you-don't-crack-up) at the irony. 

This is my reality: camels melting and me stepping right on a plastic Baby Jesus while I'm huffing and puffing and striving to make this house presentable to make Merry.

And Baby Jesus is back in the manger for now. 

But I'm pondering tonight, the unexpected places he shows up in my life. 

No, not the plastic one, but the Living Christ.  

As I lay the plastic figure, the tangible, touchable one back where he belongs for the 714th time this Advent, I think, with heavy heart, how I long to relegate the Living Christ, the Author and Finisher of my faith, the Alpha and Omega, how I long to put Him somewhere that's more comfortable for me. 

I long to find Him when I crack open my Bible, when I whisper prayers and want answers, and on Sunday mornings, regardless of the snarls and grumbling that happened en route to church. 

And I long for His presence on these high holy days, especially when we light the Advent candles, and on Good Friday too.  

And when my sister died, or when we learned about my daughter's back problems, these are times I desperately need Him, expect and demand Him. 

But it's a little harder to welcome Him in the piles and heaps of unfolded laundry, in the tantrums in the grocery store and the I-don't-feel-like-picking-up-my-cell-right-now-because-I'm-pretty-annoyed-at-you-Buddy moments. 

I want to hide my messes, my failing, and  mundane little nothings.

I'm so quick to forget that the reason this Baby came, right into the stinking mess of a stable, was because of our sin, our inability to commune with a Holy, Loving God. 

He came low because this is the reality of our lives.  

And it is the sick who need the doctor, and when I stop pretending I'm not aching and bleeding from this sin-sickness, I can receive the tender care, the soul medicine of repentance and forgiveness.  

Because it's in welcoming Him into my mess, my failing and endless striving, coming to Him with my sin and ugly selfish parts of this heart - right now, in this present moment, that I find the costly grace He came to lavish on the captives set free.

So today I ask you to join me, embracing the mystery of the Word Made Flesh - the omnipotent God formed into vulnerable, helpless baby, and the mystery of His coming into our messes and mundane moments, and the goodness of knowing His love at Christmas, and every day, in all things. 

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Christina