Front and Center

All Christmas decorating begins and ends with the manger. Without the manger, without the stable, there is no Christmas.

Last week we looked at preparing for Christmas by cleaning house, not our physical homes, but our spiritual dwellings. In this second week in Advent we examine getting ready for Christmas by decorating our homes. What better place to begin than with the crèche.  

Janice and I purchased this crèche from a German craftsman in the small village of Ettal, just outside of Oberammergau. We've decided that it's not only a part of our Christmas decorations, but a permanent fixture in our living room.

"And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn." Luke 2:6-7 King James Version

While our homes are filled with all sorts of Christmas decorations, there was nothing frilly to make the stable feel like a home. There wasn't even a proper place to lay a newborn baby (and I don't suppose the sanitation of the stable was up to hospital standards).

Yet this is how our Savior chose to enter our human history.

The stable and manger are reminders of the humility of the one who comes for us. Just as foreign as the manger is to our Savior, so is the cross. The One who sat enthroned in heaven is laid in a feeding trough and nailed to a cross.

This is how our God comes to us. He comes in humility. So, like Mary and Joseph, we are invited to bend our knees before this gift who comes to us clothed in our human frailty.

This year let the crèche have the place of prominence among your decorations as a reminded of your Lord's humility.

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(Click on picture to enlarge.)

Text and Photographs ©Copyright 2012-2013 Douglas P. Brauner.  ARR.