Light Comes to the Stable

“Love one another; as I have loved you, so you are to love one another.
If there is love among you, then all will know that you are my disciples. John 13:34, 35 NEB
When God wrapped His Son in a tiny bit of humanity to send Him to this dark world,
He could have come to a carefully prepared palace. But He chose a stable,
probably a cave, dark and dirty, cold, cluttered, disorganized, and unprepared.
Why? Why would God choose a stable?
Maybe to show us that He comes to the darkest places, to show us grace,
to allow us to experience love. Maybe to teach us that when Jesus is born anew
in our hearts He is born in the cave of our lives.
As Christians we readily invite Jesus to the palace—a quiet
place inside ourselves where everything is more or less tidy,
and we can offer God a semi­clean space
from which to rule our lives.
We are familiar with the palace. But we want to deny the cave:
the place of our pain and our need. In the cave, if we allow ourselves to go there
at all, we face our fear, our loneliness, our brokenness. We face our sins, too,
and our powerlessness to change ourselves.
We run away from the cave, yet this is where Jesus longs to come.
For in the cave we see Him best.
All my life Jesus lived in the palace I had prepared for Him.
But the day He came to the cave He showed me startling pictures of the
struggler I am. First was my stubborn, resistant self. A workaholic, trying
but often failing, because in this deep inner place I had not fully surrendered.
I also saw a codependent woman, living for many years on the praise of others,
an anxious rescuer, skilled at denying what she did not want to face.
And I saw a frightened child unable to dance and play.
I journaled about the images, trying to understand. Suddenly I noticed that
Jesus did not enter into my discussion or analysis of my inner self.
He had showed me myself. Now He loved me just as I was.
He simply held me, hugged me and soothed me.
His love covered me and my shame disappeared.
I saw Him as I had never seen Him before.
And in His eyes I saw healing for each part of me.
At Pentecost all the disciples had failed their Lord.
The palaces had been stripped away. Only the caves were left.
The truth of their need was all they had. Their need and His promise.
There in that very place, grace and love accepted their brokenness
and began the change in them that changed the world.
Then, and only then, could Jesus’ desire for them be lived out.
Because we can never really love one another as Jesus loves us until we
experience how much He loves us. We don’t know how He loves us in
the palace—only in the stable.

By Linda Lane Gage (published in “The Listening Heart” devotional book for 1993
by Review and Herald Publishing Association)