This past weekend, I made the brave journey to a local department store to do some Christmas shopping. This year specifically, my wife and I are trying to get all of our shopping done within a reasonable time, unlike past years. To be honest, we are usually the couple frustrated because we can’t find parking at the mall on the evening of December 23, and once we do, there’s slim pickings inside.
Inside the department store was complete and utter madness. People were browsing, rushing, spending, picking up online orders while others were figuring out if the self-checkout contraption was giving them their promised discount. Husbands were double parked out front impatiently waiting for their wives’ shopping escapade to end. Pedestrians crossing into and out of the store, trunks of cars being filled up with purchases everywhere you look. It’s definitely looking a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go.
In one of the smaller and much more humble store windows within walking distance of the large department store sat a lonely little manger scene. I’m not even sure if it was dusted off before they put it on display. It was old and worn down, a few of the pieces looked like they may have been glued back together at some point. An educated guess would say that the manger scene may be inherited, possibly with more sentimental value than anything else.
There was no fanfare at this store window. It was all at the large department store that was running a double sale that day. No one was glaring into the little store’s window with admiration for the decades old, almost unseeable little item. No one noticed that baby Jesus wasn’t yet placed into His manger. They most likely have the personal tradition of placing Him there before they close up shop on Christmas eve. Behind the shadows of the shopping madness sits this little old Nativity scene that no one seemed to notice at all.
Walking away from that window I thought to myself, “Why won’t the Nativity Story just completely go away?”
“Why can’t we as a society, once and for all, just wipe this two-thousand-year-old apparent fairy tale out of our midst?”
“Why can’t we just remove the religion out of Christmas and make the holiday whatever each person wants it to be?”
People, leaders, and groups with power have undoubtedly tried, yet still here sits the lonely, beat-up little manger scene behind the hustle and bustle of Christmas. Many movements, cults, fables, wives’ tales, and stories do vaguely exist. The Nativity Story has caused the entire world to shut down for a day, while billions of people actively celebrate this one specific birth.
Is it possible that this Christmas story isn’t a story at all? Could this be the account of God truly taking on human flesh as He spoke of seven hundred years prior? That He saw us, humanity, in our inherited sinful condition and decided to come to where we are and rescue us from ourselves. Was that very first Christmas so much the ultimate act of selfless love and such extravagant generosity that it just won’t completely die off? God incarnate, born of a poor lowly virgin peasant girl, lived an extraordinary yet ordinary sinless and blameless life only to die an unjust death taking my many sins upon His own body. Rising from the dead three days later and proclaiming that this manger scene, His stainless life, and the executioner’s cross to which He was nailed was the only way to bridge the gap between God and a human race that is undoubtedly fallen.
That little manger scene won’t go away because this living story has been touching and changing hearts and lives since it happened that very first Christmas. God visited us and still visits us, desiring each person to be saved and changed. I pray that this beautiful, timeless and eternal story visits your heart and home this Christmas.
Through all of the Christmas madness, the little manger scene is still sitting there.
