Room for Jesus

I wrote this post about two years ago, and never published it...not sure why, but here it is...think of it as a cool flashback or something. I still think of this every time I pass the sign...passed it about a week ago.

Summer and I went to Bethlehem about a week ago (not the one in the desert, the one in Pennsylvania) and I snapped a picture that really did something to me. It was ugly and beautiful at the same time. It is a sign in Bethlehem, for a local hotel. The sign is red, a little weird...because it says, simply, Hotel Bethlehem.

I got to thinking about the sorry welcome that the human race gave to the most important person to ever grace this planet, the scandal of it, the ghetto nature of the arrival of the Messiah to this weary planet. I got to thinking about the poor welcome Jesus has in my own hardedned and calloused heart.

I have puffed myself up with a lot of garbage, a lot of mechanisms to help me think that I'm ok, that I don't need anything or anyone, that I can make it on my own. I thought about the seediness of me own heart and the pride I muster from a soul that deserves none to keep out the one thing that will give me peace. It is ridiculous and ironic enough to be beyond darkly funny and crossing into sorrowful territory.

I think of the symbolism rich and wrapped up in the form of a frail, human baby coming to save the world, and doing it in a back alley, sleeping among poop and straw and the company of beasts. That inn, that good-for-nothing, full-up-to-the-brim, no-good inn. If it were today in Pennsylvania it would have a gaudy, neon-lit sign beconning weary people with no where else to go to its crowded doors. No room. No room for Jesus.

Isn't that the way it is with me? No room for the one hope I have. No taste for the medicine that would bring healing to my aching bones and weary, tired mind. Stubborn and stupid enough to claim that there is no room for a frail, humble baby to come and change everything.

I think I need Jesus (I know it, in fact, more and more deeply). More than even how much I need Him, I was thinking there better be room for Him here in my mess, or else there's no hope for me.

And that is exactly how he comes. Into a place that doesn't have room, one of the most humiliating ways a child can come and join our ranks. There's war and breaths being held in heaven and hell over this kid. This is the way our hope chooses to begin His quest to save us. And He could have it any other way. But He doesn't. It seems He prefers it this way. May we make room, invite him into every nook and cranny of our wayward souls.