No Room at the Inn
By Marc Eskander
It was bittersweet attending Christmas in Church watching people be turned away at the gates due to exceeding the limit of people in the church.
Yet one very poignant image kept coming to mind. The young Saint Mary and her betrothed, Joseph, frantically running around Bethlehem in the dark of night. Mary, heavily pregnant, tired, in or very close to labour. Joseph, a man with the world on his shoulders, tasked with ensuring this one moment in history goes according to plan, trying desperately to find something resembling anything close to being worthy of the birth of our Lord. They are turned away at every place they visit.
“No room, sorry”
“Are you crazy? It’s census, of course there’s no room”, “we’re all booked out sorry.”
Sound familiar?
“Yeah I think I might have some space, but to be honest, I don’t think you’ll like it. It’s dirty, there’s animals and their droppings everywhere, it smells. It’s not ready to cater for the birth of a baby, no one has ever slept in it apart from animals. I don’t really give it that much attention because it just gets dirty all the time.”
Exhausted, and with barely the energy to think of an alternative, Joseph musters a response, and hurriedly rushes the Virgin Mary to her birthing suite.
When you are turned away at the gates of our church, count yourself lucky to be in the company of our Lord. Turned away everywhere they went, our Lord chose humility, He chose a stable. Hardly fitting for a king, yet it was God’s wish. And it still is. God wishes to come into our hearts that are undeserving.
Like the stable, they are dirty, smelly and haven’t been cleaned in a long time. We cover them with hay and straw but the filth lays beneath. We hide them to everyone and don’t really think anyone should see them or know about them. We are so concerned that someone will come in and expose everything. We are despaired that the stable is too dirty for our Lord.
Yet, it is precisely here, that the Lord wishes to enter. He wishes to enter it with his Mother Mary. He wishes to bring the hope and joy of the Shepherds, who for hundreds of years had waited with hope for the coming of their Saviour. He wishes to bring the gifts of the Wise Men, royalty, holiness and His glorious suffering. He wishes to place the star of Bethlehem right over you, glorifying Himself through this miserable stable.
So rejoice, the true meaning of Christmas isn’t the Christmas Eve Liturgy, or the gifts or the food or the laughter. It’s that today Christ “became man so that man might become God.” When life doesn’t go according to plan, when you have no where to rest, when you’re worried that your stable is too far gone, too dirty for Christ to make a home in, remember;
Today He has accepted to come into YOUR stable. Today, Christ brings his Holy Family to make a home in you specifically. To sweep up the filth, to clean the manger, to make room for Joy, Peace and Wisdom. Today Christ began the journey to Golgotha to save you. Today, Christ is Born.