Excerpts from
"It began in a Manger" by Max Lucado
"The stable stinks like all stables do. The stench of urine, dung, and
sheep reeks pungently in the air. The ground is hard, the hay scarce.
Cobwebs cling to the ceiling and a mouse scurries across the dirt floor.
A more lowly place of birth could not exist."
"Off to one side sit a group of shepherds. They sit silently on the
floor, perhaps perplexed, perhaps in awe, no doubt in amazement. Their
night watch had been interrupted by an explosion of light from heaven
and a symphony of angels. God goes to those who have time to hear him—so
on this cloudless night he went to simple shepherds."
"Rest well, tiny hands. For though you belong to a king, you will touch
no satin, own no gold. You will grasp no pen, guide no brush. No, your
tiny hands are reserved for works more precious:
to touch a leper’s open wound,
to wipe a widow’s weary tear,
to claw the ground of Gethsemane."
Humble beginnings for sure. I think what I love best about nativity scenes is that they are interactive. The individual that sets it up or looks at it can interact by moving the pieces around. Creating a scene that they imagine or think it may have been like.
I had a surprise this year when I set it up. We have a collection of rocks in the box from places we have been and use them to reate a rocky hillside or such that the Shepherds/ Kings may have traveled upon. I picked up this one rock- speckled and smooth and on the backside was written Tremont Maine 2004 then the tear filled my eye . . . for this was the location of dear church friend Ray who had passed from this world to the next just 3 days earlier. I had no idea that it was in that box. I can think of no finer remembrance of this Former Lobstah' fisherman, engineer then part of the nativity scene, I placed his rock on top of a larger smooth rock from Cape Cod that is in memory of my FIL Dave. The two of them had been great friends over the years. They are now part of the Great Story. Rest well, you will not be forgotten.
