The first winter that I knew my friend Claire, we went weekly to the grocery together. I had a car available as my husband took the train to work. She lived within reasonably walking distance of the store, but bitter cold descended early that year, the Chicago kind of cold that literally sucks the oxygen out of your lungs. God had strategically placed someone on my path with a specific need. And so, I became the designated driver on our weekly jaunt to get groceries.
As in community with other believers, we all in some way bring something to the table, so to speak. Each week, we squished three carseats door to door for her two kids and my baby girl in the backseat of my little Subaru. It helped her to have a ride. But she blessed me so much more. She showed me what life looks like, covered lavishly by the gospel.
I absorbed a lot of wisdom that winter, probably unbeknownst to her, things that I still remember about what spiritual life looks like and how it is radically played out in our lives. Most likely, she remembers none of our conversations. But I do. You never know what will stick in a person's heart.
In December of that year, in the midst of Advent, I came with my daughter to pick her up for our weekly grocery outing. There was something very different in what I found.
A table stood front and center just inside the front door of her apartment. Her nativity set was displayed on it, the first thing I saw as I entered her home, so prominent that I had to skirt around it to come into the apartment.
She saw my perplexed look. Why would she put the nativity there?
"I want it to be the very first thing someone notices when they come into our home," she said. "There is something different here. We celebrate Christmas, but the nativity is not a decoration. It is the very core of Christmas. I want it to be the first thing people see."
And so, through the years hence, our little nativity is the first thing we set up and in a place where it is first seen. We celebrate Christmas in all of its glory, but it is not about the decorations and brightly wrapped packages, not about Santa appearing, but Jesus coming.
I noticed this year that the gospel had invaded even unlikely places. I had placed little nativity sets that we had accumulated like little reminders in unexpected moments of my day, little figurines in glass and wood and plastic, that don't just tell a familiar story, but remind me what all this is about.
In the dining room:
In the kitchen:
And right in front of me on my desk:
As if Jesus is saying, "Don't make it hard for others to find Me."
And she gave birth
to her firstborn son
and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths
and laid Him in a manger,
because there was no place for them
in the inn.
Luke 2. 7
A Christ-follower should have the brightest house on the block,
in more ways
than a string of lights.
Joy to the world
The Lord has come.
There is something very different here.
And that would be Jesus.
Let every heart prepare Him room.
