Stable-izing

I found myself a little sad today realizing that I haven't spent any time alone pondering the Christmas story. So tonight I sat down with the Jesus Storybook Bible. When I catch my heart getting a little dim and needing a new handhold, I pull this out to give me childlike language and love for the story of Jesus:

"Mary, you're going to have a baby. A little boy. You will call him Jesus." Wait, God was sending a baby to rescue the world? "But it's too wonderful!" Mary said and felt her heart beating hard. "How can it be true?" "Is anything too wonderful for God?" Gabriel asked. So Mary trusted God more than what her eyes could see.

That same night, in amongst the other stars, suddenly a bright new star appeared. It blazed in the night and made all the other stars look pale beside it. God put it there when his baby Son was born -- to be like a spotlight. Shining on him. Lighting up the darkness. Showing people the way to him. You see, God was like a new daddy -- he couldn't keep the good news to himself. He'd been waiting all these long years, and now he wanted to tell everyone.

I finished reading and know I needed my sadness today. I needed this moment to stop and let my heart beat hard like Mary's and run towards the star like the Shepherds. I've put my head down and am marching forward through the busyness. Reading Luke 2 in these sweet, yet pervasive terms, I just can't escape the question tonight. "Is anything too wonderful for God?"

And in reality, it's not as if I have even been living in disbelief that what's happening is TOO wonderful. I've been living as if nothing is wonderful at all. As if my personality and service and proffering's to the world are required to make the Christmas story function.

Forgetting that my actions are all the stars in the sky, pointing the way to Jesus. He's not the star pointing people's way to me.

It's easy to compare myself to a shepherd: dirty, unwelcomed, isolated, because occasionally, I've felt that so distinctly. Yet I'm realizing that I often forget that I am also the star. Allowing God's hand to use me to illuminate and make the false truths seem pale. And i'm the stable, the dirty confines where God chooses to spotlight His most important moments.

How quiet it must been that night, with cattle lowing as the only nursery rhyme, when these frail and socially awkward boys show up asking to see Mary's new kid. What must that conversation have been like? Did she let them hold the King of Kings? Was there a camaraderie amongst them? Or was it just as awkward and unceremonious as it must've been when Joseph shooed a goat to the other side of the stable while Mary gave birth to the Wonderful Counselor?

But this is precisely what God is calling wonderful. The meeting of the unlikely, brought together because He has a story for them to tell. A different story for each, for the shepherds -- acceptance and welcome, for Mary -- trust, belief, miracles, for Joseph -- obedience and beholding, something for each of us. Something that meets our truest reality and most broken places in need of healing.

God finds good favor with you friends, He longs to make you in your Stable-ness a place of wonderment. Let not only your festivity reign this Christmas, but know festivity anew with a yes to this baby's true and better Kingdom.