We hope that some of our subscribers enjoy our little magazine enough to share it as a gift with friends and family, particularly those who might value a bit of respite from the weary world.
Hit the button below to check out our deep Christmas discount on gift subscriptions, also at a forever rate. Schedule your gift subscription to begin on Christmas Day or New Year’s Day or whenever you like. We’ve posted a printable gift certificate below to mail or to present to your recipient.
Even people who don’t know anything about Scripture, I think, know about the Christmas story, that Mary and Joseph were traveling to Bethlehem, and Mary was with child and the day of her delivery was fast approaching, but when they sought a place to stay, there was no room for them in the inn. So they stayed in the stable, and there Jesus was born, with the animals nearby, and they laid him in a manger for his bed — a wooden feeding trough.
People have tried to make something political about it, but that’s to divert attention from the profound meaning of the event. According to the evangelist, there would have been a lot of people on the road just then, because the Roman authorities had called for a census, for the purposes of taxation. So it’s not as if the innkeeper was hard of heart; and a stable — perhaps a shallow cave or a place cut into the rock on a hillside — might have been comfortable enough for people used to a humble life. But there you see the startling contrast. On one side you have Rome, the ruler of a vast empire built on efficiency, law and order, great works of civil engineering, and bloodshed, with enough cruelty on occasion to keep people timid. On the other side, you have a carpenter, his wife, some animals in a stall, some nearby shepherds, and a little baby boy. Nobody knew it at the time. Even Saint Luke did not know it. But Rome that had never lost a war was going to be conquered by that child. Yet even if there had been no Rome at all, the birth of Jesus would have been as it was, a stealth invasion into conquered territory: the Son of God, taking on human flesh, to batter down the walls that sinful man had built about his heart, to keep mortality in and immortal love out.
So we are apt to hug ourselves and say that if Jesus came among us now, we would certainly give him a better place to be born in than a stable. But who is the needy? Who is weary and in desperate need of the inn? That’s the question that our Poem of the Week asks. When it comes to that, it doesn’t matter whether we live under an empire or a monarchy or a democratic republic. It doesn’t matter whether we are rich or poor. I see in my mind’s eye the late afternoon traffic on Interstate 80, outside of New York City, piling up so badly, because we don’t take nearly as good care of our roads as the Romans did of theirs, cars full of people weary from work, weary from traveling to and from work, and weary from something else that might surprise us. I have put it this way, in The Twelve-Gated City: “Exhausted, from pursuit of happiness.”
Is the child Jesus, in the womb of Mary, on the road? Our poet George Herbert turns the tables: I am on the road. Not only is the speaker on the road; he hardly knows where he is at all. Is the child in desperate need of lodging? It’s I who have nowhere to lay my head. Are we all set up to welcome Jesus among us? Jesus rather is waiting for us finally to come to his inn. Do we have a place for him? He not only has a place for us: He is the place.
That’s just in the first eight lines of the sonnet. The last six lines are a petition. So far, Herbert has said nothing at all about Christmas. In the petition we turn to it, and again with a surprise. Says the speaker to Jesus, if I may paraphrase, since you once “stole into a manger,” wrapped in the swaddling clothes of night, then you may do the same with my soul. It’s dark, just as the stable was. It’s brutish too, not with the innocence of animals, but with the debasement of sin. But it is yours by right. If you could be friendly to the cattle and the sheep, then be no stranger to me.
And we are still in for a surprise. In the last two lines, which are the heart of the six-line sentence, the speaker asks Jesus to “furnish and deck” his soul, so that Jesus will have “a better lodging than a rack, or grave.” Think of it. The two lodgings that mankind gave to the Son of God: the first, a cave and a rack for the cattle to eat hay from; the second, a tomb cut into the rock. Jesus alone makes the fit dwelling place. Without him, we have no rest. On our own, we dismiss him and ignore him, or we put him to death. His is the work: and unless he works, even our rest will be exhaustion.
Profoundly moving — but the poem doesn’t end there! What follows is a bright and rousing Christmas song — which I’ll save for next time.
All after pleasures as I rode one day, My horse and I both tired, body and mind, With full cry of affections, quite astray, I took up at the next inn I could find. There when I came, whom found I but my dear, My dearest Lord, expecting till the grief Of pleasures drew me to him, ready there To be all passengers' most sweet relief. O Thou whose glorious yet contracted light, Wrapped in night's mantle, stole into a manger: Since my dark soul and brutish is Thy right, To man of all beasts be not Thou a stranger; Furnish and deck my soul, that Thou mayst have A better lodging than a rack, or grave.
Note: Our full archive of over 1,000 posts, videos, audios is available on demand to paid subscribers only. We know that not everyone has time every day for a read and a listen. So we have built the archive with you all in mind. Please do browse, and please do share posts that you like with others.
