I ask you a question. Have you ever heard of news during your generation or witnessed a human baby born in a stable or under where animals are kept and placed in a trough or manger?
Answering this question for myself, I haven’t yet. When I gave birth to my now seven-year-old girl, it was in a hospital with a private obstetrician. On the minute light illumined on her form at the delivery room, she was immediately wiped by the doctor’s assistants, wrapped with a sanitized cloth and placed in a small crib in the hospital’s pedia ward for proper SOP’s for newborns before she was finally given to me.
For what on earth then is my giving birth got to do with a baby born in an animal house and placed in a trough or manger?
December is the finale of the year when both colorful decors and lively choruses warm the breeze of the season signifying the celebration of Christmas. This month made it’s way to the details of the story of the nativity as told in the first chapter in the book of Luke of the Holy Bible.
Years ago since I first heard of the nativity, I haven’t felt strangely about it until one particular morning during a new children’s Bible Study held in our house every Saturday that began around mid-November this year with a group of kids from our neighborhood. It was the fourth Bible Study that started with who Jesus is, how He came to earth, what He wants for us and finally about His ministry. When our lesson was about Jesus’s birth, I described the part by how He was conceived until the point of Him being placed on a manger likely with dried hay as bed on a very cold night in a stable where sheep and other ruminants that time were kept and probably with many mosquitoes whizzing around. A strange feeling immediately crept inside me while narrating the story of which deeply touched my being and bringing me into tears. It was a feeling I never experienced before. I was with children about 10 of them aged 4-11 including my very own daughter and I was very certain that they were born in a hospice in the care of birthing aides. If ever one of those kids in front of me got born among cows, goats or horses kept in a stable, I’m sure he/she would have been the top list story in the community and his/her parents might have been the center of unfathomable ridicule. It was at this very point then that I got teary and felt somewhat physically drained. (I managed though to hide my face from the children). I found and felt the truest humility ever of God turning Himself into a human form and born into this world without any assistance from a doctor nor laying down on sterilized birthing accessories.
As a mother having experienced pregnancy, I imagined myself as Mary with my husband Joseph knocking on doors of a strange village on a very cold night praying that someone would shelter us because I was in severe pain laboring for birth. But nobody did so we ended in a cows’ and horses’ shaded corral. We were wearing thick rugs and our feet so dusty. We smell sour because of sweat maybe. With human feelings I pitied myself. I felt so insecure. I felt a tinge of anger against the innkeepers and the villagers. I shed a tear. Then I gave birth. The pain slowly ceased when I heard my baby cry for the very first time. Jesus our God and Saviour was born fully as a human being.
In the context of social science, one can never understand the behavior of a person or group of persons without putting himself in the shoes of the sample vis a vis the sample with the sampler. This situation is a metaphor of God turning Himself into human form. The reason? Because of His unconditional love to you. To me. And to the whole humanity. He loves us very, very much.
Like us though, He experienced hunger. He experienced thirst. He experienced pain. He laughed and cried and even got angry. He was ridiculed. He had to walk kilometers or possibly even miles and miles on mountains, plains and deserts during His ministry. He never slept in a cozy bedroom. He was born not in a palace. Educated not in Harvard University nor at the University of the Philippines nor at the Hebrew University in Israel
To most of the children whom I was telling the story was their first time to hear of the entirety of it. They only know the names of the figurines of the nativity scene that is popularly displayed every December - where there is Joseph and Mary, the baby Jesus, the sheep around and the “three kings” (the children haven’t heard of the wise men) who brought them gifts.
If God had not become a man, I would never understand His sacrifice just to save me from my evil ways. He had to obey death – death on the cross. He is the reason why there is CHRIST in Christmas! He was the baby born on a very cold night in Bethlehem
