Dear Jesus,
I can hardly believe it, but two thousand years later it’s easy to think that the stable was a romantic place for a birth. Cozy light, cooing doves, an immaculate virgin, a smiling baby.
The stable was an awful place for a birth, cold and dark, filled with pooping cows and flatulating donkeys and enough crawling germs to make any new mother recoil in horror. Into this place you came, slippery, bloody, squalling. They caught you before you hit the floor, and blessed Yahweh for the one clean place—yards of soft cloth your mother prepared for you.
Quiet at her breast, you blinked dark baby eyes, sticky with the first tears of your humanity, taking in the world into which you’d emerged.
And you were perfectly at home.
You lay at rest as the bacteria crept over to greet the king of the world. In the awful vulnerability of newbornness, silken skin against rough hay, tiny organs pushing back the cold and sickness, you lay at rest.
Today I try to create a perfect space for your coming—everything clean, neatly wrapped, rich, delectable, quiet. I cannot get it done. It won’t be just so and I cannot pull it off, but into this space you come anyway—into this place of unfinished ideas, homemade dolls with too small of heads, disappointing fruitcake, presents clumsily swaddled in cheap paper, merry voices too loud around me. You come. You are perfectly at home here, and where you enter the world is made holy.
You are beyond me. I love you and weep for you and ache for you to come.
Shari
Beautiful. Thank you Jesus that you accept us and all our imperfections! Welcome back, Shari, and Merry Christmas!
thanks Shari, love looking at new ways to experience the amazing story. welcome back, i missed you ;0)
Yes, yes, yes.
Love this! Come Jesus, into every day and into every heart.
Yes! My heart longs for him (in complete fullness) and and the same time rejoices in the reality of his presence today………
I love the new look of this blog and the additional pages.
Yes. Amen.
That last paragraph… I will think about this for days. Thank you!~ Carolyn
This touched my soul! Thank you for the reminder of my desperate need for Him!!
PS maybe you feel led to write a book?
I love this so much ~ thank you for the reminder that I so desperately needed. So so happy to read your blog again and I love the new look!
Oh, yes. The last paragraph is just what I needed to hear.
I like your new header.
Loved this post. Touched my heart as it longs for him. What a great reminder.
Shari is back and her words touch deep places. It won’t be just so and I can’t pull it off. But still He comes.
Glad you are back . . . I missed you.
Thank you for this reminder. How can we know this stuff and forget it so easily?! This is perfect for me going into the new year, staring at my crisp new planner book, jotting careful notes, and eager for fresh opportunities to “get it right”… How I need Him.
This is good. I persist in thinking I will someday get it perfect, and need this perspective– that Jesus comes into our imperfect world, our imperfect lives, and stays. Imperfection doesn’t scare HIM.
I like your header, too! Looks good– simple and clean, with the beauty and color of the photos spotlighted.