The manger baby

by Pastor Jim Strelan

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So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger (Luke 2:16).

Read Luke 2:(1–7), 8–20

Do you sometimes feel that your life is so ordinary? Nothing special about it, nothing anyone would write about in a magazine or report on TV news. Just a day-to-day struggle, trying to keep our heads above water. When we think about God, especially at Christmastime, we can easily think about majesty, glory, shining light, accompanied by choirs of angels – other-worldly, nothing at all like your life or mine. And God is in all those things. After all, God is God.

But see what we have when God comes to our earth. He comes as a baby, covered in gunk, bawling his eyes out, desperately seeking his mother’s breast. Not in the most prestigious hospital in the land, but in a cow shed, in a feed box for the animals, with no reporters and cameras and bright lights as witnesses, just some shepherds tired from a night out in the fields. A manger baby. Very, very ordinary if you ask me.

But that’s the magic of God. He loves to be in the ordinary, in muck, the inglorious – where we are. It’s interesting that the Christmas story, as we have it in the Gospel of Luke, consists of both the awesome and the ordinary at the same time. A bit like my experience of life with God. I am in awe of him, worship him, lift up his name, and I know that he is with me in all my ordinariness and brokenness. A traditional image of the baby Jesus in the manger is with his hands open and reaching out as best as a baby can. Reaching out to you and me as if to say, ‘This is for you; this is how I want to be involved with you. Come to the manger with me, and we will journey together. I am born for you. I enter your ordinariness and show you God’.

That’s worth doing what the shepherds did: glorifying and praising God (verse 20). May your Christmas celebration of the manger child bring you great joy.

Thank you, God of all, for choosing to enter our world in the ordinary. Be in the ordinariness of my life. Bless me today as I celebrate the birth of the Saviour. Amen.

Jim is a retired pastor who lives with his wife, Ruth, on the north side of Brisbane. He is a proud and not very humble Brisbane Lions supporter. Jim likes to read, listen to music and play golf. He and Ruth love being with their young grandchildren and watching them grow. For Jim, grace is everything, and he will share that however and whenever possible.

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