Payer Call: Away in a Manger (Make Room)

Good morning BFB!

On this cold Florida Monday morning, let's push play on the 4th track of The Advent Playlist. The focus for the week is Making Room and our song is "Away in a Manger."  

The scripture focus is Luke 2:7 (NIV): She gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Do you see it? Can you feel the tension that rises when that song is held next to that Scripture? Every year, we sing Away in a Manger. We sing it softly, almost instinctively: “Away in a manger, no crib for a bed…”

It’s familiar. It’s gentle. It feels safe. But if we slow down long enough to really hear the lyrics, they confront us with an uncomfortable truth. Jesus wasn’t placed in a manger because it was charming or quaint. He was placed there because there was no room. No room for Him at the inn. No room for Him in the hurried plans of people moving through Bethlehem. No room for Him in the political machinery of Caesar Augustus. No room in a crowded world too busy to recognize God showing up in human form.

From the very beginning, Jesus knew what it meant to be pushed aside. From birth, He was placed on the margins. And The Advent Playlist doesn’t let us rush past that reality. It forces us to sit with the tension, and then asks us a hard, personal question on this Monday morning: Is there room for Jesus in our lives right now?

Bethlehem was crowded. People were traveling, registering, complying with Caesar’s decree or doing whatever they had to do just to survive. And in the middle of all that movement and obligation, the Savior of the world arrived, only to be pushed to the margins.

Doesn’t that sound uncomfortably familiar? To be sure, most of us don’t do it intentionally. We don’t deny Him. We don’t turn Him away with hostility. Instead, we do something quieter and sometimes far more dangerous. We don’t reject Jesus; we simply reschedule Him. We crowd Him out.

Our calendars fill up. Our minds stay busy. Our weeks get planned down to the minute, often before prayer ever enters the conversation. We know exactly what we’re going to do, but have we made room for Jesus? I’m asking myself that very question this morning.

This Advent season invites us to wrestle with a hard but necessary question: What has filled my life so completely that God gets whatever space is left? I can hear Rev. Gardner’s voice now: “What a question.” And I’m not asking it just for you...I’m asking it of myself. Will you ask it too?

When you read the birth narratives of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, one thing becomes clear: nobody accidentally made room for Him. Mary made room when she said yes to a calling she didn’t fully understand, at barely twelve to sixteen years old. Joseph made room when he chose obedience even when the story didn’t make sense and he wrestled with the fear that the child Mary carried was not his. The shepherds made room when they left their fields, followed the announcement of heaven, investigated what God was doing in Bethlehem, and then went and told everyone the good news of what had been born.

Each of them shows us that room was made through intention, not convenience. BFB that truth still stands today. Making room for Christ doesn’t usually require adding more to our lives; it requires reordering what’s already there. It looks like choosing prayer when I wake up before I ever scroll my phone. It looks like sitting with the Word before I start worrying through my emails. It means choosing obedience even when it’s uncomfortable and inconvenient.

My prayer is that Advent will not remain just a season we observe on the calendar. My prayer is that it becomes cultural, a posture we adopt, and a rhythm we live. Advent is preparation work for the heart, and if we let it, it will shape how we make room long after the season has passed.

Now we have to skip to the next track because this is the bonus edition. There’s a song many of us grew up with at Beulah that speaks directly to the idea of making room. The next song on the playlist may not sound like a Christmas song at first, but I promise you, it is an Advent song. The song is “There’s Room at the Cross.”

This is where the good news (the gospel) meets Away in a Manger. The tension that holds Advent together is this: the same Jesus who had no room at the inn made sure there was room for us at the cross. I believe that will preach Sunday. They couldn’t find Him a place to stay, but He found us a place to belong. They pushed Him aside at birth, but He pulled us close at Calvary.

The manger tells us something about the world we live in...a world that often misses God when He shows up quietly, a world that didn’t have space for Him. The cross tells us something even greater about God Himself; that He refused to leave us outside. That’s why that old hymn still rings true: “There is room at the cross for you.” At the cross, there was a place for you, and there is a place for me.

So even while Away in a Manger is playing, I still hear There Is Room at the Cross echoing above it. Why? AGAIN!!! Advent reminds me that long before we made room for Him, He made room for us. Beulah, as this week begins, The Advent Playlist asks more of us than whether we recognize the songs or remember the story. It asks whether we are willing to make room (real room) for Christ in our daily lives. Room in our schedules. Room in our decisions. Room in our hearts. Not just during worship. Not just during the holidays. But in the ordinary rhythm of Monday through Sunday. Will you make room today?

As always have a blessed Monday. You know I love you and there ain't nothing you can do about it.

In His Service
FLC