This will be a sign to you

This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. - Luke 1:12

The word ‘manger’ has taken on mythic meaning in the past couple thousand years of church history. But what it really is should make us consider. It’s a feeding trough for sheep - imagine them drooling into it as they eat, bits and pieces of straw, some of it half-eaten, falling back in. The sides of it green and grimy. This was Jesus’s crib.

As one of our preachers once taught us:

The mess of the world trickles down and collects around the people living at the bottom of society’s heirarchy. That’s exactly where God came into the world as baby Jesus. - Riana Shaw Robinson

God came to the least, the last, the poor and the penniless. That’s where God found a home. Symbolically, that means there’s space for God in the broken parts of our lives, in the messy parts of our lives. Practically, that means that God, as the old theologians wrote, gives preferential treatment to the poor.

In your private faith today, look for Jesus in your own rubble. As for your public faith today, ask God how to join Jesus in the renewal of all things, starting with advocating for the poor.