The Live Nativity

The smells, the sounds, the chaos....the night we sing about being silent and peaceful was probably a far cry from that.  There is a church across the street from our apartment building that hosts a live nativity every year.  We missed it last year but made sure that we stopped by on our way home from church this year.  I am so glad that we did.

It was nothing spectacular but the kids loved it and it flooded my mind with precious thoughts of that first Christmas.  When we walked up there were kids and animals everywhere and the characters were in their places...I was looking at the scene and I saw the angel being played by the nurse who was with us right after Elisha's birth last year.  Seeing her brought back vivid memories of Elisha's birth - clean hospital environment, privacy, my own room, doctors and nurses who knew what to do, clean cloths to bathe him with and warm blankets to swaddle him in.  I then took inventory of all that was going on around us and realized that the night our Savior was born was nothing like that.  He left the grandeur of heaven and entered this world by the most humble of standards - entering our sin filled world in a city that was too full for Him and too busy to care, in a stable with loud, smelly animals and a food trough buzzing with flies for his bassinet, into the arms of two young people who were probably a little scared, lonely and far away from home. Christ entered our weakness, filth and shame so that we could be with Him forever.

I walked back to the car as a beautiful voice sang praises to the Lord. Humbled. What a holy night...even if it was not so silent.