December 23 – A Sign for You: Loveliness

December 23, 2023
Advent Reflections

You make it all seem so lovely. So lovely in your Christmas cards, your Christmas carols, the manger scene in the town square. The stable looks warm and inviting, filled with light. The hay fresh and sweet, the beasts with gentle eyes, Joseph and I glowing as we gaze down at our baby boy in the pristine manger. Will it ruin your night if I tell you it wasn’t like that? The stable was more like a cave, really. A cave hollowed out underneath the back porch of the inn. It smelled of earth and feed and dung. The straw strewn about was damp and soiled, rough to the touch. We had one candle: one feeble candle casting shadows on the walls. There were the bugs, beetles, and flies and earthworms. There was the scrawny donkey. The team of oxen standing so close, hot breath hanging in the cold night air. And the birth? Like so many others: pain and blood and panic. There were no midwives there to comfort me. To help the baby out. Only Joseph. Petrified, worried, exhausted Joseph to hold my hand and mutter prayers and wipe the sweat from my face. When it was all over, we used rags and straw to mop up the blood; wrapped shivering Jesus up as tight as we could in a strip torn from Joseph’s cloak; and laid him in the feed bin. Joseph and I looked at each other—looked at the dirt smudged on our faces, the circles under our eyes, the tangles in our hair. We looked so tired. It wasn’t a beautiful picture. A lovely scene. A fairy tale. It wasn’t beautiful; but it was holy. It said something about my baby, our baby, that he was born into such ugliness and desperation and chaos. Because that’s what the world is like, isn’t it? Soiled, dark, lonely. With beasts lurking about and we humans trying our best to mop up the blood, to wash away the dirt, longing for rest. The Baby I held in my arms that long ago night was the One born to fill our shadowy world with light. To wash us clean. To transform our ugliness. That’s why you’re here tonight, isn’t it? It’s all about God taking something ordinary and flawed and dreary and making it lovely. Maybe those Christmas cards got it right after all.

This will be a sign for you: Loveliness. 

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