A Manger?

Advent Devotional by Melody Newman

“For there is born to you this day in the city of

David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe

wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”

—Luke 2:11-12—

A manger? What is a manger? My handy Webster’s dictionary says that a manger is a “trough holding livestock feed.” A trough! What a bed for the King of Kings! And yet this is what God allowed Mary and Joseph to place Him in. On our Christmas cards and in our Christmas pageants, we usually show the manger as a cute little wooden structure filled with fresh, clean hay. It may actually have been made of roughly hewn stone, and we can only hope that Joseph and Mary found hay that was clean enough to make a comfortable crib for their baby. Whatever the manger was made of, and whatever it was full of, it was almost certainly not beautiful or fancy, bejeweled or sophisticated. It was a utilitarian object, plain and simple, and yet it held the Son of God. We people, too, are often plain and simple. We are rarely beautiful in the world’s eyes. We are seldom fancy or bejeweled, and most of us are not terribly sophisticated. Yet our Heavenly Father has allowed our hearts to hold his only begotten Son. If that isn’t a wonderful Christmas gift, I don’t know what is.

Prayer:
Heavenly Father, thank You for loving us enough to send us Your son. May our lives reflect the beauty and the glory of that gift. Amen