Away in a Manger

THE CATTLE ARE LOWING, the Baby awakes. But little Lord Jesus no crying He makes. Wait a second! That line in the second verse of the beloved carol, “Away in a Manger,” has irked me for years. Of course, it has not been enough to stop me from singing it at Christmas Eve services or at times of caroling around the piano or even at bedtimes with the children (during, potentially, any month of the year, not just December!). But the pebble of irritation about the manger scene has proven to be just enough to re-open the Christmas narrative and see if such a detail is explicitly mentioned or implicitly inferred anywhere. Did little Lord Jesus, really, no crying make?

Verdict—Mary’s first delivery was a normal, healthy delivery in every way, which leads me to conclude that there must have been plenty of crying to go around! Jesus, Mary, Joseph, shepherds, and eventually the wise men—pass the Kleenex® box around. Can angels cry? Well, if they can they too might have joyfully blubbered with the rest of them! “I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10).

Not in 2011 … nor, for the record, in 2012(!) … but Shellie and I have made our rounds through the obstetrics ward at the hospital five wonderful times in the last 14¾ years. We have concurred that it would not be in the least bit serene, or happy, or joyful to have a baby who was not crying in the first moments of life. There is nothing in the Christmas account in Scripture that even remotely suggests that Mary’s delivery was any different than any other woman’s delivery or that Jesus’ birth was anything different than any other baby’s birth. Certainly, Mary and Jesus were unique in ways that beg for more study and more dialogue, but the events of that night were entirely … and dare I say … blessedly ordinary.

I am not trying to spar with poetic license written into “Away in a Manger.” Actually and tangentially, I found something else noteworthy in the relatively few verses allotted to Jesus’ birth in the Bible; something that I might have missed if it were not for my borderline compulsive urge to fact-check traditional Christmas carols. This year I noticed an amazing absence of anything out of the ordinary with Jesus’ actual birthday. His birth infused blessing into uneventfulness.

Perhaps you are like us in this regard, too often we give thanks for the brushes with the supernatural; those macro- or micro-deliverances that could only be explained after-the-fact by a providentially attentive Almighty God who graciously scrutinizes our paths. But I don’t know if I have ever before thought of the blessing of the ordinary. Granted, on that first Christmas there are many elements of sheer drama and utter terror, where the so-called experts were tongue-tied and the so-called bumpkins were silver-tongued. We would be the last to remove, even remotely, the supernatural from the Incarnation. But on that night, with that couple, in that stall, with that feeding trough nothing extraordinary happened. On the nearby hillside where the shepherds were guarding their flocks at night, there were supernatural fireworks going off. In the far-away sand where the Magi were studying the night-sky, there were miraculous “dots” being connected. But in the stable behind the inn which had no room for the King-in-disguise there was the blessing of uneventfulness.

Mary, for sure, had unanesthetized labor-pains throughout her delivery. Joseph, for sure, wished there was someone else present who had actually delivered a baby before; or at least someone who could advise him about basic female anatomy since he and Mary had not seen each other in that way yet. Not to belabor the point (pun intended!), but there was blood and fluid and after-birth and the ubiquitous clumsiness of figuring out how to feed a baby as a first-time mom. And, in my imagination, crying must have been generously exercised—before, during, and after the birth.

For Mary and Joseph all the miracles—and there were many—happened before and then after this very ordinary birth. The conception, of course, was perhaps the greatest miracle of all. The marriage that was not severed when Joseph discovered the news of Mary’s pregnancy without his (or any male’s) participation—this was a miracle that must not slip past our careful attention. Mary’s miraculous welcome received from her relative, Elizabeth, who was also miraculously pregnant. Jesus’ fantastic in utero greeting from his in utero cousin, John (the Baptist), was also miraculous. Time prevents a full treatment of the miracles that light up the narrative: the shepherds, the angels, the Christmas Star that apparently moved as needed to guide the wise men to Jesus, the escape from the massacre at Bethlehem, the dreams given to Joseph several times along the way, the name selected for the Savior, the city where the birth took place, even the timing of the tax requirement issued by Quirinius the Roman governor of Palestine at the time.

But that night, away in a manger, God steeped sublime dignity into the ordinary by allowing His Son to be birthed in exactly the same way all humans are birthed. God infused supernatural guidance and perseverance—incognito—into the otherwise uneventfulness of Christmas. This is the Christmas meditation that I stumbled across while looking for another thing altogether—what so often feels like God’s distance when it takes our every ounce of energy just to keep “treading water” in the ordinary, just trying to make it, just waiting for the time to punch out for the weekend … what often seems like God’s disinterest or even disapproval in our achingly long stretches of silence and uneventfulness … might actually be the times when God is nearest of all. God is not always found in the euphoria of the phenomenal, or in the serenity of the mystical. Sometimes—and arguably most times—God is found in the ordinary manger straw that is intentionally hidden in the alley behind the neon “no vacancy” sign, underneath the pain, awash with salty tears on the clumsy side of life when we think no one is paying any attention at all. Pass the Kleenex® box—for what seems to be the most ordinary may be, in fact, our front row seat for the most extraordinary thing of all: God came near.

Uganda 2011

Webele Yesu (WAY-buh-lay YAY-soo)—thank You, Jesus—for a very good, very deep, very rich 11 days to Uganda and back again.

Dr. David Livingstone—Scottish missionary to and explorer of the African interior during the mid-1800s—wrote many books and journals that our eyes have never skimmed. Conceivably his mind has forgotten more information than our minds have ever learned. Certainly his feet have gone places our feet have never dared to go—that is until last week. For an unforgettable week Shellie and I were in places nestled between Lake Victoria and Lake Albert in the Rwenzori Mountains of western Uganda; places that might very well have hosted Dr. Livingstone we presume(!) as he hunted for the sources of the Nile … places that help us to understand a fraction more of what Livingstone once said, “If you have men who will only come if they know there is a good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.”

Last week we saw where the “good road” quite abruptly ends and where, beyond the asphalt, rose the “smoke of a thousand villages” as Dr. Robert Moffat said to young Livingstone, thus propelling him deeper into the African interior than any missionary before him (William Garden Blaikie, The Personal Life of David Livingstone, 1880). Last week we tasted the other-worldly lure of contributing to the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ to all nations through the agency of the local church. Last week we thanked the Lord for the honor to travel several hours beyond the spot where the “good road” ends for the purpose of speaking the promises of grace in at least one of those “thousand villages”—Nyahuka village in Bundibugyo district, Uganda, just a few kilometers from the Congo border.

It was a week of “firsts”: our first trip to Africa, to Uganda, to the Equator where the water doesn’t swirl when flushed (when there was water!). This week brought the first glimpses of banana, mango, and cocoa trees; the first fields of coffee bushes and tea plants. We trekked into the rainforest to see a community of chimpanzees, drove on the left-hand side of the road through mud as deep as the 4x4 tires were tall—these were all “firsts” for us. Never before had we forded a swiftly running river in a vehicle or eaten the parts of a chicken we normally toss to the dogs. Never before had we gotten sunburned in November. These were our first tastes of goat, posho, millet, and matooke. We have never before been awakened at 5:30am by Arabic-speaking Muslims over the loud speaker indiscriminately calling would-be converts in the village to wake up and stop being lazy (or so the translation was reported to us since we do not, nor does anyone in the village, speak Arabic) and come to prayer mandatory for their salvation. Subsequently, we have never before distinctly thanked God for His grace in that particular setting, as the loud speakers crackled in the pre-dawn darkness—thanking Him particularly that it is not what we do that saves us (like pray five times a day) but what Christ did—serenely rolling over to sleep for another hour in our freedom in Christ before the sun blazed through the screened window. It was a week of “firsts”; even spelling them out makes me think of more “firsts” to round out our journey story.

We have seen grasshoppers before, of course, but never had we seen crowds gather where men turned on bright lights at dusk in order to attract the insects, catch them in nets, and sell them wriggling in the bag for future feasting. We have experienced cold showers before, of course, but never because there were no hot water heaters at all and certainly not during a typhoid outbreak in the local water sources. I have keynoted at conferences before, but never before had I taught 21 pastors across 3 denominations for 8 consecutive hours about disciple-making through the gospel of Matthew…and never before had I taught a second time in one week with 12 missionaries from 3 countries about the “glory” of Christ. Shellie had visited medical clinics before, but never before when latex gloves were luxury items and never before when malnourishment was so rampant (even in a place where everything seems to grow; but too little protein).

We have participated in prayer services before, thousands of them probably, but never before had we prayed for and with people who were dying of HIV/AIDS. We have joined in praise services before, but never before to our ears had the songs been offered to Jesus in the beautiful Lubwisi language; never before had the instrumentation been solely homemade drums and voices woven together in distinctly non-Western harmonies. We have gone on pastoral visitation before, no doubt, but never before has it been on foot down trails far too narrow for vehicles through clusters of banana trees, mud houses, and very thin children practicing their one memorized English greeting, “How are you?” We must have replied, “Fine, how are you?” a thousand times. [How did they know we spoke English; two of probably six mzungu (foreigners) residents in their whole district all of whom form the World Harvest Mission Team of missionaries and who are consistently, visibly sunburned—almost glowing—whether they are seen at the village market or in the health clinic or at the water project or around the church?]

Webele Yesu—thank You, Jesus—for such a deeply moving, textured, and soul-altering week with the Babwisi people. May they be well-represented when all the tribes and tongues and peoples sing Your praise at that great Ingathering of worshipers when You return to earth as King of the nations.

Webele Yesu—for our friends, new and old, serving with World Harvest Mission in Bundibugyo, Uganda, East Africa for the sake of Your name. May they be sustained and empowered on all levels and in all ways by the Spirit, especially in those non-glamorous parts and storylines that never make it into the prayer letters or the mission conferences.

Webele Yesu—for allowing Shellie and I to make this trip together, for allowing our children to be well-loved and “super-cared-for” by Grandma and Grandpa, for allowing our church in Siloam Springs, Arkansas to be ultra-supportive and generous to “lease us out” to minister to the larger Body of Christ (which is not often the case!).

Webele Yesu—for each of you; some who prayed, some who gave money, some who donated supplies, some who filled the pulpit, some who administered the communion, some of you who did a combination of all of these gifts. This trip was simply impossible without your participation.

Webele Yesu—for the gospel of Your grace that changed our hearts from merely focusing upon ourselves to focusing upon the nations, even if only for 11 days at a time.

Webele Yesu—for the upcoming opportunity, July 4-24, 2012, to return to Uganda with a team from our local church (a team which this time includes our son, Seth, who will be 15-years old and excited to join the “adult” ranks in missions!) to serve and assist Your servant-missionaries who are living among and ministering to the most vulnerable in eastern Uganda. May Your name be glorified now and then and beyond then.

For the sake of the Name (3 John 7),

Kevin & Shellie Rees

2 December 2011

“God, send me anywhere, only go with me. Lay any burden on me, only sustain me. And sever any tie in my heart except the tie that binds my heart to Yours.” — David Livingstone