Oh What a Pretty Barn You Were Born In!

Christmas is my very favorite time of year.  I love to celebrate the birth of my Savior!  Lately I have been contemplating the birth of Jesus.  Growing up I could picture it....

Mary and Joseph sitting next to Jesus in a gorgeous little stable, surrounded by the cleanest and prettiest barn animals, in the cleanest and most well kept barn you ever saw.  I know you are picturing it too!  It's the way most nativity scenes are portrayed!

Having birthed three babies, I'm not sure Mary looked quite so put together!  And Silent Night??? Hahahahahahahaha.  Like David Platt has said, I have never seen a baby not scream when a cow moos at it!!!

Let's take a look at the reality of the birth story in the book of Luke.

Luke Chapter 2 (ESV)

1In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3And all went to be registered, each to his own town. 4And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. 6And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

So first of all, Joseph and Mary embarked on a journey of  more than seventy miles.  This would not have been an easy trip for Mom.  Joseph and Mary knew that Jesus would probably be born after they reached their destination, and most likely realized that this would fulfill the prophesy in Micah 5:2.

Micah Chapter 5 (ESV)

2 But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.

Instead of resting and preparing for the birth of royalty, Mary treks through the mountainous region to be counted.  I cannot imagine the discomfort she must have been in.  Maybe she rode a donkey, which I rather doubt simply from the fact that I know how it feels to be jostled around late in pregnancy.  I figure she most likely walked.  We really do not know what her mode of transportation was, but even if she had a helicopter, late pregnancy is pretty miserable!  My point is that if she had been someone of greater status, she would not have had to make such a journey.  

While Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem, Mary's due date arrived.  Not only was there no room to sleep in a decent place, Mary had to give birth in a less than "ideal" space. There is no actual description in scripture of the birthplace of Jesus, however, Ancient tradition maintains that Jesus was likely to have been born in a cave used to contain livestock.  This would have been very common in those days.  The manger he was in was probably a dip in the cave wall where the livestock was fed.  It was most certainly dirty.  Not at all the way you would picture a king coming into the world, so why do we Christians want to pretty it up?  To ease our conscious maybe?

Thinking of the birth story in the non-classic way humbles me.  Does it make me feel guilty that myself and my children entered the world in a grander way that my Savior did?  Absolutely.  Then I think about the fact that Jesus chose to lead the life that He did, in the manner that He did.  That simply AMAZES me!  Why would anyone choose to have a difficult life that is full of ordinary?  The fact is that Jesus loved the world enough to do this.  If He would have led a life of extravagance filled with pomp and circumstance there would be a LOT of people that would feel that Jesus is unrelatable.  How does someone who is poverty stricken or an outcast relate to someone who is pampered and without problems?  They can't.  I suspect that Jesus knew and understood this better than I can.  Jesus came into the world in a way that would reach out to every person in every economic class in every culture.  

Jesus knew that He was sent here to lead a life that I couldn't lead.  He knew that coming into this world was literally a death sentence.  But because He loves His children, He did it anyway.  Oh what a Savior!  

Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?

My entire life I have known about Jesus.  My family has always been very dedicated to Christianity, and I literally grew up in the church.  I have known most all of the basic stories of our religion from the Creation all the way to the Revelation.  Somewhere along the way, it stopped being real to me.  It stopped being my saving grace, and turned into a fairy tale.  The Jesus that I knew growing up was not at all the Jesus that I would come to give my life to.

Growing up, my Jesus was very hard to please.  My Jesus was difficult to understand.  The Jesus of my childhood needed me to work as hard as I could possibly work to earn grace and favor.  This Jesus was weak and pretty.  He never became angry, was always happy, and would grant every prayer I prayed, if I only prayed and worked hard enough.  This Jesus that I came to know quite obviously HATED me.    I know that this may sound ridiculous to some, but this is what I knew at the time.  See the thing is, I never felt forgiven.  I never felt like I could do enough to please Him.  I had a very challenging home life, and prayed my heart out for so many things, but never even felt the peace or comfort that I was promised by my family members.  I must have been bad and committed some foreign sin that I didn't even know was a sin.  I would beg God to forgive me for whatever this sin was, but to just please hear me!  I looked around my church and saw people with no problems, and who were quite possibly the most perfect people ever.  I saw people that God was blessing with abundance and who were so happy.  I wondered what I was doing wrong.  Christianity to me was being the perfect person who could not possibly even think about committing a sin.  For some reason, no matter how hard I tried, I could not NOT commit sin.

So I quit trying.

I started to realize that the "perfect" people I went to church with were not perfect, and had terrible flaws and horrible problems behind their pretty facade.  I quit going to church, and pretty much turned into a person that I did not recognize.  Without going into the gory details, I gave up on this Jesus because I thought I would go to hell anyway, so what was the point of trying so hard.  I definitely did not want to be one of the people in my church that lived their lives how they wanted during the week and then got "holy" on Sunday.

I got married and moved as far away from my comfort zone as you can imagine.  A new town where the only people I knew were my husband and his handful of family members.  We had our first child a little over a year later and I sunk into a deep post-partum depression.  When my baby turned two, and I was still so depressed that I did not want to function, I decided that I needed to find a church to fill the hole that was in me.  After visiting several, and not finding one that I felt okay with, I quit trying.  Then one day, a new friend invited us to church to hear her new pastor.  It took me a few weeks, but finally I did.

This is where I finally heard about the real Jesus.  A Jesus that I had never heard of.  This Jesus said that in this life I would have troubles, but that he would get me through them.  This Jesus knew that I could never live the perfect life, so He lived it for me.  This Jesus knew that I could never work hard enough to be forgiven for my sins, so He died for me.

What a revelation!  It has changed me forever.  This Jesus is so real.

I realized that I did not know the Jesus the pastor was talking about.  Of course, I always believed that Jesus came to earth as a baby and died for my sins.  But this Jesus was funny and could be sarcastic.  He got angry.  He felt deep sympathy and compassion.  He hung out with people of questionable reputations.  This Jesus was relatable!  I looked at my life and knew that this Jesus may not make my life perfect in every way, and that I was going to have problems, but I was going to get through it all if I would just dedicate my life to Christ.




That's just a (very) brief summary of my wonderful testimony, but I want to share this Jesus with others.  In this blog I plan to share the story of Jesus a little at a time through Bible study.  I hope that you will join me.  Feel free to comment and join in on the study!