Mary and the Manger

I tried to place myself in her shoes, and I got a pit in my stomach. She was entrusted with the Son of God. She would raise the Savior of the world. Holiness, growing in her abdomen, birthed into her home, raised under her watch.

I bet she imagined what the birth would be like. Maybe she played it all out in her head. Had Joseph already made a beautifully crafted wooden crib? Had she sewn a blanket? Had she saved up to purchase some quality soap and clothes so she could wash him and dress him? How do you welcome the Son of God into the world? I’m sure she did her best to start right. And I sure a stinky barn and a dirty manger in a city not her own were not a part of the plan.

As she laid Jesus in the manger, did she feel guilty? This is not how I wanted it to be, God. It certainly wasn’t the start she had planned for. I wanted his birth to be like I prepared for, like I envisioned in my mind. I wanted his welcome to be special. You’ve entrusted your son to me, and I’ve already messed it up. I wonder, if she could have changed the whole scenario, if Mary wouldn’t have wished she could go back and do it over again. Did she feel inadequate? Did she wonder in that moment why God would allow his son to be born to a family that couldn’t even give him a proper birth?

But God lit a star in the heavens and said, this is exactly how I want it to be. 

The fullness of God wrapped in baby skin. The greatest Greatness laid in a simple manger in a humble stable. The perfect sacrifice given to two imperfect parents. And there, in the unexpected place, he came. The stable that Mary felt was so unprepared was exactly the place God prepared for his Son to be born.

It makes me look at my inadequacies, the places where I wish I was better suited for God to work, the places that I’m ashamed of, and the places where I feel like I’m not enough. Here God holds me and says, this is exactly how it needs to be. In your weakness, I am strong. In your inadequacies, I am enough. Where you lack, I fill up. Where you feel unprepared, I have prepared to display my glory and greatness.

I see Mary at the manger, and I imagine that she heard God speaking the same things to her. And the pit in her stomach washed away in tears of pure wonder and awe and adoration for the Lamb of God. For God has come. Heaven cannot contain all of his glory, yet he squeezed into a womb. The infinite king swaddled in cloth. The Glory of God fit into a manger. Just the way God wanted it.