A homesick expectant mother finds comfort.

AWAY IN A MANGER



Our God is an awesome God! Let me tell you what He did a few years back.

Our family had been transferred to Cyprus from Saudi Arabia because our baby was due in a couple of months and there was no suitable medical facility in Jidda. I busied myself unpacking boxes and learning enough Greek to go marketing. I got acquainted with the neighbors.

Most of all, I tried to keep warm. Our Cypriote house was built of limestone walls with high ceilings and marble porphyry floors. Ideal for the hot summers of this Mediterranean climate, it was chilling in the winter and had no central heat. October was getting crisp. I began to spend my days coaxing fragrant logs to burn in the fireplace and filling the reservoirs of smelly kerosene space heaters.

I grew rounder.

One day I laid out the things I’d collected for the baby. I spread soft blankets, tiny undershirts; flannel gowns flecked with rosebuds; two stacks of cloth diapers, and big safety pins, on our bed. Everything we needed except a crib.

Plenty of time, I thought. Still a month to go.

“Maybe we could get a wood crate,” my husband, Don, said. “We could put blankets in it.”

But I didn’t want to put the baby on the cold, drafty marble floor.

“Maybe we could buy a crib from someone,” I said, and began to ask around. No one’s child had outgrown a crib. No one had any suggestions.

Then one day, I spotted our dresser, tall, five drawers high. The top drawer was well out of the draft. I pulled the drawer halfway open. Perhaps a baby would feel snug in there. Maybe that could serve as a crib.

Next day, I was ambushed by a mood swing. Tearfully, I looked at the chest of drawers. “Poor baby,” I sniffed. “Some welcome you’ll be getting. Not even a decent bed.”

I put a vinyl record of Christmas music on our record player. Listening to the carols, I felt more homesick, more mistreated, than before. And then I heard, “Away in a manger, no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus lay down His sweet head. The stars in the bright sky looked down where He lay—the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.”

Imagine! The Most High God, King of the Universe, could have chosen a palace for His Son’s birth. He could have had a koa cradle, silken sheets, a solid gold rattle. But He chose to have His Son born in the lowliest of places, a stable. That baby’s first bed was a box filled with cattle feed.

Did God know that 2,000 years later, a young, scared girl would be homesick, crying for a decent bed for her baby? Of course He did. Would she have been comforted, knowing that the Son of God was born in luxury? No. Was she comforted that He was laid in a manger? Oh, my, yes!

. I folded a light blanket and laid it in the bottom of the drawer, then sprawled in a chair to rest. I patted my stomach and smiled as the baby kicked its tiny foot against my hand. “Little one, you’re going to feel loved and cared for,” I said. “You’re going to sleep warm and cozy and content in that dresser drawer. Merry Christmas.”

Hebrews 4:14-16 tells us: “We have a great High Priest who has gone into the very presence of God—Jesus, the Son of God. Our High Priest is not one who cannot feel sympathy for our weaknesses. On the contrary, we have a High Priest who was tempted in every way that we are, but did not sin. Let us have confidence then, and approach God’s throne where there is grace. There we will receive mercy and find grace to help us just when we need it.” ( Today’s English Version)

Born in a stable, laid in a manger. How awesome, our God!




Elaine Masters is a member of the missions committee of First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu and is a freelance writer.

Parts were published in HONOLULU ADVERTISER newspaper.