Christmas Day of 1981 found me as
the chaplain on call at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center. Actually, I had volunteered to work that
day. I was only single guy in the chaplain’s
department and I wanted my coworkers to be with their wives and children. I volunteered for another reason. This was the first Christmas after dad died
and I thought it was better to keep busy and to focus my energies on others. Christmas Day in the hospital is tough,
because all but the sickest patients have gone home. Those who remain face very serious
illness. As I walked the halls that day,
seeing very sick patients around me and feeling terrible pain inside me, I
asked myself, Can Jesus be born in a
place like this? When I got to the end of that very busy day and looked
back at the people and problems I’d seen, I realized that Jesus, in fact, had
come into the messy painful places of our hearts.
He
came—to the parents and grandparents of a tragically stillborn child, a family
that knew that because of Jesus, they had hope of one day holding their child
in heaven.
He
came—to a woman who wanted to go home, but knew that her circumstances were
taking her, instead, to a nursing home, a woman who, amid all the unwanted
changes in her life, clung to the truth that would not change, the Savior who
is forever faithful, the love from which nothing could ever separate her.
He
came—to a man who invited me to share the Christmas that his family had brought
to him at the hospital because he couldn’t go home, and we knew he never would.
It was a happy day; it was a good day because he knew that every day is a gift
from God, every day a gift to share with those you love.
He
came to my family as we faced our first Christmas without my father.
Who
would be born in places like that? The
one who was born in a stable. The Savior
of the world. The Son of God. Jesus.
He
will be born in you today, if you will only believe that He is born in stables,
in far less than perfect places, in sinful broken people like you and me.
Do
you believe that?
Then
ask Him, welcome Him, invite Him, and Jesus will be born in you, just as you are.