Prepare Him Room

The liturgical season of Advent is merely a week-and-a-half away (and there was much rejoicing). 

Advent is a time of longing, of yearning, of waiting for the Light of the world to dawn upon the darkness of December. For the span of four weeks, we will read the Scriptures that prophesied and foreshadowed the birth of Jesus Christ, we will remember our Lord’s nativity, and we will joyfully anticipate the Day that Christ makes his second advent. 

Or at least, that’s ideally what we’ll do. 

The ideal, of course, is just that: the ideal. It is very rarely real. Thus it is with Advent: Preparing room in our homes for Christmas decorations may come easily enough for most of us, what with decking the halls with boughs of holly and erecting pine trees in our living rooms and drinking hot chocolate till we’re red in the face; but preparing room in our hearts for the arrival of Christ is another matter entirely. Just ask his mother.

Prepare Him Room

I’m sure that most of us know the story: poor Mary and Joseph, having traveled all the way to Bethlehem (and when Mary was at full-term in her pregnancy no less!), can’t even find so much as one guest room at the Bethlehem Super 8. But lo, the baby Jesus waits not, and after Mary’s labor is finished, she has nowhere to lay her sweet newborn other than a manger (and contrary to popular opinion, I’m sure that the little Lord Jesus much crying did make). 

Before we go much further, let me run ahead of you just a bit: I’m not going to turn this whole article and say, “Now don’t be like that Ebenezer Scrooge of an innkeeper; make sure you’ve made room for Jesus this Christmas!” 

(To be sure, I will ask you, in the words of that lovely yuletide carol, to “let [your] heart prepare him room,” but the innkeeper has nothing to do with this. Honestly, that poor man has probably been more unfairly treated than any other person in the Scriptures -- what else was he supposed to do when the Emperor of Rome sent him more travelers than Bethlehem had probably ever seen?)

Rather, much like the story in Luke 2 actually goes, my encouragement to you is to prepare the Lord room wherever you simply happen to be. 

While I’m sure that Mary and Joseph felt many frustrations and fears on the hallowed day of Christ’s birth, we don’t find any complaints or grumblings recorded in the Scriptures. What we find is that Mary and Joseph welcomed their baby Son where they were, with what they had. If a manger was all they could find to lay him in, then by God’s grace, it was enough. 

He Meets us in Madness

So here’s the brass tacks: Christmastime is, for many of us, inordinately full -- and with plenty of frustrations and fears to go around. We’re scrambling to buy and wrap gifts for the people we love, we’re attending parties and feasts, we’re pushing through our final work projects of the year. These aren’t inherently bad things; the trouble arises for many of us when these are the only things, and when we grumble about how little time we seem to have. 

If we’re to take a very honest look at ourselves, it was probably all of our decisions from January through November that got us into such a frantic December in the first place. We’ve got no one to blame but ourselves, really; yet, at the same time, how could we have known that a choice made in March would lead to such a hectic December? 

You could argue that the same thing happened to Mary; how in the world could she have known what madness actually awaited her when she told Gabriel that she would willingly bear the Holy One of God? (This, by the way, brings a whole new meaning to the song Mary Did You Know?)

But when the moment of madness came, she did what she could to attend to Jesus; she wrapped him in what clothes she could find and laid him where she could. Meanwhile, outside the town, a choir of angels sang Gloria and a group of shepherds ran breathlessly up to the manger with praises on their lips. In spite of all the mayhem, Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart (Luke 2:19). When it came down to it, Mary’s house wasn’t decorated, the cookies weren’t baked, and the gifts weren’t wrapped; yet her heart was full of wonder, and she seized what moments of silence and stillness she could.

The invitation of Advent is join Mary at the manger. Unlike her, most of us will have our houses decorated, our cookies baked, and our gifts wrapped; but much like her, most of us are experiencing some form of madness and insanity in the Christmas season. But, again, let’s be honest: Mary had it worse than probably any of us currently have it. Yet thankfully, it was precisely into such madness that Christ was born -- so surely he can meet us in our madness, too. 

So if you find yourself outside the inn, realizing there’s not even one room to spare, take heart; you walk a well-trod path. You have only to take a few steps to look into the manger, during what moments of silence and stillness you can find. Christ is there.

Perhaps I can say all of this better with a poem. I wrote this sonnet last year, when I was feeling harried and hurried myself.  

Advent Sonnet IV

I want to stroll with Advent slowly,
make my time saccharine, sweet —
to breathe deeply and behold the lowly
Savior in the dark of this winter retreat —
but there is great reaping to be done
with sermons and phone calls and meetings
and the harvest is white, absent the sun,
and the sacred is buried in season’s greetings
as the calendar fills to the tip of the brim
and I lament my place in the station.
My eyes are frantic, looking for him,
begging a pause of the Hope of the nations —
then I recall that mangers rotten and torn
are the only places the Son will be born.