BK's Korner, 12/18/2023

BK’S KORNER

When I was in High school I was in FFA. Every year we raised animals to show in the stock show. My high school best friend and I raised pigs.  We raised them together at his place. We did this every year we were in high school. For a feed trough we took the tank out of a water heater and cut it in half with a cutting torch. So, we had a long half round trough to pour the pig feed in. There was enough room for at least two pigs to eat at the same time. I can still see and hear those pigs digging in that trough. Snorting, grunting, slobbering and eating. 

Every year during the Christmas season when I hear someone say or I read about the manger actually being a feed trough, which it was, I think about that trough we fed our pigs in. We have, through our romanticized thinking, sterilized the place where Jesus was born. He slept in a feed trough!  A place where animals had stuck their faces, tongues and mouths. A place they had licked and slobbered in.  Likely, you would never lay your child in such an unsanitary place.

So, that begs the question, why would God lay His Son there?  I really don’t know that I have a good answer.  However, it drives home for me the reality of Philippians 2:6-8, which tells us that Jesus who was God, set aside the rights and privileges that go with being God and became a man.  To go from being in the form of God to being in the form of a human who belonged to a poor insignificant family was a leap that we will never be able to understand.

It also makes me question why we would ever believe that God wants everyone to have this perfect wonderful life where we prosper in everything we do, get whatever we desire, are victorious in every situation and are healed from every disease. Think about it. He put His Son in a feed trough in a small middle eastern town over 2000 years ago. Why should we expect any different?

Also, I think we can see the humility of Christ in this scene. The gentleness of the gospel and depths to which God will go to bring us salvation. It really is an amazing story that we have become so familiar with that we have lost the reality of that first Christmas.  God became a man so that we might become His children.

Merry Christmas

BK ><>