Can you believe it?!  Thanksgiving already?!  More amazing to me is the fact that Advent begins this Sunday. In honor of the Advent season, here’s the first a two-part article I wrote for a previous Christmas season.

Enjoy!

O Come, Emmanuel!

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)

No place. No room. Due to the census decree issued by Caesar Augustus, Bethlehem was bustling with activity. A swollen city, full of inconvenienced citizens. The inn was in high demand, and like most malls this time of year, it was full.

It’s not a unique story in Scripture. The Bible is peppered with stories of people who didn’t have “room.” Room for a wedding feast (Matthew 22), for a prophet who was running late (1 Samuel 13), for a hard saying about eating flesh (John 6) or for a the impossibility that the man standing in front of you is the Son of God, raised from the dead (Matthew 28). There’s no shortage of people who have no room for God.

But this Christmas, God is calling us to have room.

I have a friend I eat with from time to time, and he says, “Dessert is not something you save room for; it’s something you MAKE room for.” And I’ve seen him do it! It isn’t pretty sometimes, and it can cause some discomfort! And if that’s what it takes this Christmas, maybe we need to make room for Jesus in our own lives, even if it causes some discomfort.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 10:32 am and is filed under christmas, worship.