Looking For Christmas
When you look at a manger scene what do you see? You say, “a stable full of animals, Mary and Joseph, a few shepherds thrown in, some Angels, and, of course, the Baby Jesus. It all looks so quiet, so peaceful, so safe, that sometimes we forget just why Jesus came. To give His life for us. To give us strength, and courage and hope. Psalm 55 says “Cast thy burdens upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee”.
Now, I don’t know about you, but in my life, God does a lot of sustaining and, sometimes, I wonder how He has the time to help anybody else but me. But what is our job, your task? To keep our eyes on Him, our hearts in tune, and to play our own small part in that sustaining work.
You say, “how so”? Listen to this story. It’s about a woman who recently found herself in the middle of serious traffic on a busy Denver Street. And, from nowhere, her car started to sputter and cough, she remembers coasting into a gas station, irate and upset – now stuck and will have to wait for a tow truck in the cold.
And, then she saw here, a woman clearly shaken, looked like she was truly not able to stand. So, she walked over and asked how she was. At that moment, the woman dropped her purse and out of it fell nothing but a nickel. By now, the woman was overcome with sobbing, she was young, but clearly worn, dark circles under her eyes, a car filled with boxes and a backseat filled with children. The lady looked at the gas pump and she now understood – it said $4.95 and the woman had only a nickel.
The woman clearly was trying to stay out of the sight of the children. She mentioned that she didn’t want them to see her cry. As they talked, the woman told her story of being broke, flat busted and on her way home to her parent’s, and the lady interrupted, “and you were praying”? The woman was taken back, “no, I assure you that I’m not crazy, God has sent me”. The lady went to the fast-food restaurant next door, bought some food, enough for them all, and as the kids woofed down what must have been their first full meal, she slipped her credit card into the gas pump and paid the bill.
After a few minutes, the woman had stopped crying and the lady went back to her car that had only minutes ago, had coughed, sputtered, and died. The woman called out “are you an angel or something”? “No, the lady replied, it’s just right now that the angels were really busy and sometimes God uses regular people”.
As the woman drove off with the kids full of food and the car full of gas, the lady stepped into her car and it started right up, she thought – nothing is probably wrong at all. And this word came to her “sometimes the Angels fly so close that you can hear the flutter of their wings”. Next time you see a manger, stop and look really hard, realize that the Christ Child is still alive, still cares for you, still wants you to know Him.
And today, as you look for Christmas, look at the Manger, look at the babe, but don’t stop until you take a long look at the cross – that’s why the baby came.
Merry Christmas!