I am quietly elated when my artistic and analytic son agrees to empty the boxes of seasonal decorations. As he unravels the protective newspaper layers and clears Styrofoam from the boxes, and randomly displays the Bethlehem creche pieces, he asks, “Can you make sense of this mess?”
My son empties the boxes to recreate the scene of Jesus’ birth…the gate, shepherds, animals, wisemen, gifts, an inn…and history emerges. But we cannot keep Jesus in a box.
A busy Bethlehem bustles with sojourners sharing rooms on mats; merchants selling silks, cheese, olives, grapes, tea, and fish; servants baking bread and washing clothes and feet; a Savior birthed into a not so silent town. The story unfolds as we search the box for baby Jesus to be set in the Bethlehem scene.
This Messiah, who was born into an unraveling mess, was never purposed “for display only.” His life was designed for all generations’ messy history, divinely destined to be used and spent and broken and bruised that we could make sense of this gift of life we are boxed in.
He is the gift, the family heirloom, to be unwrapped from the safety of our beat-up box. Once upon a time, He was gift wrapped in swaddling clothes for the downcast and the destitute, the hungry and the privileged, the babe and the elderly, the lost and the sure.
How to make sense of the mess of our days, of our busy, bustling, Bethlehem days? Am I the sojourner whose head lies on a crowded room’s mats in search of a night’s rest but misses the Promise of the birth of Shalom? Am I the merchant that sells the fish to men but misses the birth of the Fisher of Men? Am I the lowly servant whose heart has missed the birth of the Hope it longs for?
And still we both search the mess all around us, my son’s most accurate portrayal of the Luke scene before us. What box did I wrap Jesus in?
But HARK, I cry after a thorough search. “BABY JESUS IS NOT HERE. JESUS IS LOST! HE IS NOT IN THE BOX!”
My son, unable to accept this could be true, hunts once again for our central figure. The irony of the scene comes alive to us.
We joked that the wise men will be placed for eternity outside the city if we cannot find Jesus. Nothing of this scene can move forward without His birth.
This night is about His birth and our birth and His birth within us. We sense the precious and fragile.
We agree that we have time to find Jesus before Christmas. We rationalize that Jesus probably wasn’t really born in December, but probably more like September around all the other feasts and festivals. That leaves us a lot of time!
But we worry that we may not find him in time for Christmas.
And it all feels so urgent! And then suddenly it is. He is not where we supposed Him to be. He is not in the box we intended Him to be. We carefully search in places we may have overlooked. We must seek the King wherever He may be found.
A proposal forms around the edges of my mind? Can I leave Jesus out of our Christmas scene?
My heart falls to my knees. I have found excuses to leave Jesus out of my chaotic world at times. I have placed Him in a box and lost Him. I have set Him on display and called upon Him as the occasions required. Have I grasped the full truth of the scene of Jesus’ birth?
As Western culture translates the account, on the night that Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem, they were rejected by a local hotel that had its “No Vacancy” sign turned on. But His birth didn’t occur on the day of their arrival. There was time to prepare for His coming! I too have lived full and missed the vacancy that allows Jesus room to move and speak in my life.
People didn’t leave Mary to deliver Jesus alone as I depict in my mind. She would have been assisted by others waiting and preparing. There should be no excuses for not wandering ready and awake anticipating what Jesus births. His delivery is precious and fragile and expected.
Have I carried the cares of others in my arms? Have I sacrificed my comfort for His way of service and peace? Have I offered to use even my meager means to serve the needs of those around me? Have I kept guard over ones that cannot defend themselves? Has the shalom of the birth of forgiveness been birthed in the chambers of my heart?
The true message of Christmas is the Extraordinary was birthed in the common circumstances of this life.
His light shines when I display him in my life and heart and don’t keep him in a box.
And so my son and I may joke about our mess and about how we lost Jesus in a box. But may He be found in both of us.