Back to the Manger

A few days ago, I wrote about the inn. The Mandisa CD mentioned yesterday includes a reference to the manger.

"His ways are higher
His ways are better
Though sometimes strange
What could be stranger
Than God in a manger."

God's ways can definitely be strange... so strange in fact that it is so easy for doubt and fear to well up from the depths. Last evening, for a few moments, doubt flooded me like a tidal wave. It came out of no where. I just got home and ... whoosh.... it hit. Should I have stayed at Purdue (I' m not sure where that came from, it has been almost five years.)? Should I be teaching right now? What about this still being single thing?

I wonder what Mary and Joseph were thinking as "She [Mary] wrapped him [Jesus] in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn." I wonder if the had any doubts... any fears. After all, what could be stranger than God in a manger?

She placed this little baby - Jesus - in a manger because there was no room in the inn. There was no room in the inn.

Maybe another way to put it is that Jesus was too big for the inn.

Jesus was too big to come as one might expect a king to come.

Jesus was too big to take stay in the inn. Yet there was plenty of room in the manger. I grew up on a farm and can almost smell the crap in the barns even as I sit hear typing.

Jesus - too big for the norm, the common-sense, the safe way - placed in a manger. I guess it is not too far-fetched to think that Jesus might be right here, too, at the interface of my way and His way - right where doubt would want to spring forth.