559. "Beggars at the Manger" from Meridian Magazine. Reposted from last Christmas -- a favorite!
This lovely Christmas story was posted last December 24, 2014. The update on my husband is what is happening at this time ---
Today is Monday, December 21, 2015. and our grandson Cameron's birthday.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2014
319. From Meridian Magazine, "Beggars at the Manger" -- on showing compassion.
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL YOU DEAR PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD. I HOPE YOU HAVE YOUR HEARTS DESIRES, AND KNOW THAT JESUS CHRIST LOVES YOU!
Today is Monday, December 21, 2015. and our grandson Cameron's birthday.
Two Bulloch brothers -- Austin on the left, and Cameron on the right (the birthday boy today).
When Cameron was just around 4 days old, Austin developed a severe respiratory infection, and was in the hospital for several days. I went up and took care of Cameron as a newborn, as his parents stayed in the hospital with Austin a lot, and I loved it so much!
It is our daughter Pam's birthday, today also!
Married over 22 years ago!
My husband Wayne is doing okay, as far as his dialysis, but tomorrow he will have his heart shocked, as his upper chamber is beating at 200 beats a minute and the lower at 90 beats a minute. He has had his heart shocked 2 other times, and it helps the heart regulate itself, and he afterwards feels more energy. So hopefully he will feel better before Christmas in just 4 days!
This is the inspiring Christmas article!
LINE UPON LINE
BEGGARS AT THE MANGER
I have seen many beggars and their haunted, disheveled eyes have stuck with me. A fully-grown man, stunted so he was only half my height, caught up to walk beside me at a train station in India. I had come to see the Taj Mahal, but he is what I would remember with clarity. I had never before seen a foot like his. In length and width it was stupendous and deformed like a part of a scary costume, enlarged as if it belonged to a giant, three times the size of a normal foot. He just called out to me with a name I knew was true, “Hello sister.” It would have been so easy to esteem him not.
Then there was the man at a homeless center near our home in Virginia. Our friend who coordinated activities there told us one of the most helpful things we could bring to help was hard-boiled eggs as an easy source of protein for the poor who stopped, hoping for a meal.
Then there was the man at a homeless center near our home in Virginia. Our friend who coordinated activities there told us one of the most helpful things we could bring to help was hard-boiled eggs as an easy source of protein for the poor who stopped, hoping for a meal.
We delivered our eggs and, after we did, a man came up to speak to the woman running the kitchen. He had a scraggly, long beard, that should have been white but was stained yellow, his hair was unkempt like straw, his eyes rheumy and red. He was a sorry soul.
“Can I please have two eggs” he asked “to take with me for breakfast?” This was a good question since the center was only open to feed the homeless at lunch.
“I saw you already took a bunch of bagels,” the woman answered. “That should be enough.” “I just need two eggs for breakfast tomorrow. Can I please, please have two eggs?” he pled, losing all hope of dignity. Because she had wanted to save the eggs for tomorrow, she finally relented but only with reluctance. He carried the two eggs away like a cherished prize. Here was another despised, and it would be so easy to esteem not.
These two beggars are compelling images for me, but I am much more familiar with another beggar. She is a bag lady. You’ve seen the type. Scrounging for sustenance, she is carrying burdens that she picked up in life one at a time. They weigh her down. They make her stagger when she walks under their burden. Sometimes she can hardly lift them. Sometimes she collapses under the load and weeps, tears running down her face for the challenge.
Who is this bag lady? It is me. In fact, it is all of us, beggars each one. This burden, so hard to carry, so daunting, is fear. That one is the secret disappointment in our unfulfilled hopes and dreams. This one is loss and this the weaknesses that plague us and is so hard to abandon. Our inadequacies, the limitations of our capacity to love, that cache of tears we stored away and didn’t cry, these are all burdens and we beg, please lift these from me.
We knock at the door and Someone answers, someone whose face is so kind. We know we don’t have something special to recommend us that he should notice us. Before his brilliance and glory, we are not much to look at. We are not comely. Our little achievements look paltry before the One who created all things. Our intelligence contracts to nothing before Him whose light and intelligence fills the whole universe. All we have to offer is need.
We have every reason to expect that he will esteem us not. We are no more to esteem than the two beggars. Why, in fact, would one such as He look at us, a bunch of beggars, with such adoring love? Before him, we glance back at ourselves and know that it is not somehow that we deserve his attention and his care, but nonetheless there it is. We stand at the door and knock and he opens it and we can see in his face that we are someone he cherishes. In fact, someone he esteems and will give his very life for.
So much so, in fact, that on a day more than 2,000 years ago he would descend from his throne divine to rescue a soul so rebellious and proud as mine–and yours. Everything about his life would be designed to demonstrate that he esteems you, that he adores you, that he will make your ultimate happiness and eternal glory his life’s work.
We’ve all been at that scene of his birth so often in our minds eye, it almost seems that we were there. I think we were. Who else would be in that heavenly chorus? “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2: 13,14).
What is noteworthy about that scene is that it, as every aspect of his life is designed to express his esteem for us. He had been Israel’s hope and yearning for generations, the king of kings, the object of every prophet’s revelation. Surely such a one as this, the Savior of the world there would be silken sheets, the learned in attendance. He would be born in a palace fit for a king.
But no, the Creator of the earth came and there was no room for him at the inn. He was born in a manger, fit mainly for animals. Those who came to adore him were not the important men and women of the day, but tired shepherds who had been keeping watch over their flocks by night. In class-conscious Jerusalem, shepherds were among the lowest as they still are today. When his parents made offering at the temple after he was born they gave a pair of turtledoves, which was the offering of the poor.
When we kneel and complain of the meanness of our station or the poverty of our circumstances, we have nothing to teach him of this.
He said, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. (Matt. 8:20). We have nothing to teach him of homelessness. Even our beggar who wanted two hard-boiled eggs and the stunted man with the horribly deformed foot could feel perfectly understood.
We have nothing to teach him of rejection, this one who had questions pelted at him like stones by Pharisees who conspired against him in the dark?
Is there a kind of loneliness he wouldn’t understand, this one who was betrayed by a kiss and whose own apostles fled like sheep when the soldiers came for him in the Garden of Gethsemane?
Can we complain of sickness to the one who had a spear thrust through his side?
No, he designed his life that he might perfectly understand our plight, and then condescended below all things in the Garden of Gethsemane as an agonizing act of love for us—not us as a big group, but you, individually. He was saying in that garden, I esteem you—you who aren’t much to look at or to be impressed by. I love you. I value you.
In fact, always he has stepped forward boldly to love us. “Here am I send me,” he said, an act of incalculable courage and devotion. “Father from me, remove this cup, yet if thou wilt I’ll take it up.” An act of incalculable courage and devotion because he finds something in us, a bunch of beggars at the door, worthy of his esteem.
So the real Christmas question is, do we esteem him? Are we like innkeepers, so busy and rattled and preoccupied with the world, that we say, in fact, to him there’s no room here. There is no space in my soul for thee? Are we timid before the one who was so bold to sacrifice his life for us? Do we hang back not willing to work him into our schedule? Do we remain timidly silent when we should speak up for him, when we should live for him?
Do we give him lip service, not heart service, drawn away in our souls by pastimes and things that seem more enticing? Do we hold back even a piece of ourselves from complete devotion to him who gave all for us? That is the question of our souls. It is the struggle of our spiritual journey—that we love him as he loved us.
The Isaiah scripture can be changed to read differently. We have no form nor comeliness, and when he sees us there is no beautythat he should desire us. We are despised and rejected of men, a person of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and yet he turns not his face from us, he despises us not, he esteems us with his precious love and atonement (paraphrased Isaiah 53:2).
We collect nativity sets from various countries. We have always been intrigued that each nation sees those stories with their own eyes. In Japan, the people who come to worship the Savior are Japanese. In Malawi, they are African.
But what I have always wanted was a nativity set that portrays how I feel. I have wanted a nativity set with beggars who come to the manger scene, beggars whose hands are empty, bag ladies who are burdened with bags of junk who need to set them down. They may be broken in a thousand ways, stooped and sorry.
It is my experience that when I knock at his door, beggar that I am, he never turns me down. When I have his spirit upon me, I find myself instead begging to know what I can give him, I who am so empty handed. He answers, just give me your heart.
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