Make Room.
Out of the starry night comes a weary traveler pulling a tired and unwilling donkey. Upon the donkey sits the man’s pregnant wife, more tired than the beast. A brief conversation ensues in the dimly lit doorway of the Inn, as an expressive but sympathetic innkeeper says those famous words: “No room!”
It has always been that way for God. Adam had no room for Him when he chose to eat the forbidden fruit, David had no room for Him when he chose to lay with Bathsheba, the priests had no room for him in the Temple – you can’t overthrow the tables of the high priest’s concession stand and expect to have the hospitality of those in power. There is little room in our world today for someone who cares nothing for prestige, power and possessions.
This is a continuing story for me. How often have I looked Christ over and listened to what he was teaching me and then said: “No thank you! I’ve got no room for that!” We make a public holiday of his birth but there is not much room for him down in the deep currents of life; in the highways of human activity, in the gates of government decisions, in the centers of commercial finance and the significance of social gatherings. Our world has no room for a God whose concern for the outsider and the outcast doesn’t seem to belong in our culture of comfort. Yet as the years roll by, we can’t get rid of the haunting realization that Christ is the one who does belong. We are the misfits whose ugly passions and unholy lives are out of touch with reality. We are the strange ones with distorted images of what life was meant to be. It is Christ who makes room for us in His Kingdom – inviting us out of the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of light.
We will never find room for Christ we must make room for him.