I’m always overcome with the humility of our Lord and Savior. How He came into the world—not in a palace of royalty and grandeur but as a babe, in a smelly, filthy barn. In a way, we are all innkeepers. He longs to richly dwell within us.
Will we make room for Him today?
Day 24 of She Reads Truth: The Birth of Jesus by Amanda Bible Williams.
The town was teeming with people and the couple arrived late, the journey slow and uncomfortable. Mary would give birth any day now, but it was a trip they had to make. The law required it.
By the time they arrived there was no room, or at least none that was offered them. So they made a place with the animals, and that’s where she delivered Him.
“And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”
– Luke 2:7, ESV
Had they no friends or family there to take them in? Was there no room in the marketplace or the schools, the temple or the synagogue? Why was this place with the livestock—the crudest of all possible options—the only where they could find room?
Charles Spurgeon had a theory that this is not unusual, that there is very little room in society provided for our Christ. Spurgeon wrote, “There is no space for the Prince of peace but with the humble and contrite spirits which by grace he prepares to yield him shelter.”
Friends, that’s you. You are where He dwells.
Perhaps you have an objection to this. Spurgeon covers some common ones here:
“‘Well,’ says one, ‘I have room for him, but I am not worthy that he should come to me.’ Ah! I did not ask about worthiness; have you room for him? ‘Oh! but I feel it is a place not at all fit for Christ!’ Nor was the manger a place fit for him, and yet there was he laid. ‘Oh! but I have been such a sinner; I feel as if my heart had been a den of beasts and devils!’ Well, the manger had been a place where beasts had fed. Have you room for him?
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