Mary the Mother of JesusSample

Where Wonder Is Born

Each year at Christmas I place my little Precious Moments nativity set on my mantel. I put out the tiny manger, set around the cow, the donkey, the palm tree. I place the shepherd with his sheep to the left and the wise men with their gifts to the right. Carefully, I set baby Jesus in the center. He’s sleeping, his cheeks pink, his blankets a gentle polka-dotted pastel. I put Joseph beside him, and then I pick up the kneeling Mary.

I hold her in my hand. She is sweet and perfect, her eyes dark, her head bowed. Pristine. Her gown is spotless, a pale buttercup yellow. Her head covering falls in perfect folds, with not a smudge to mar her serene expression.

Just as if she hadn’t just completed a hundred-mile journey while pregnant. As if she hadn’t been turned away from an actual room. As if she hadn’t spent hours in painful labor. As if there was no blood, no dirt, no sweat, no stink. As if she never really gave birth in a barn.

I set her there beside the sleeping Jesus, knowing that we have it all wrong. It isn’t in the sweet pastels of life that we find Jesus, that we encounter him in a new way. He isn’t born in our sterile birthing rooms. He isn’t wrapped in soft, sweet-smelling fleece. He isn’t in the carefully structured, pleasantly perfect places we like to create for him.

Instead, we find him in the stink, in the noise, in the out-of- the-way, hard, sticky, smelly places of life. He’s born in our life-barns. He’s born in the place where nothing seems right, where nothing is as we think it should be.

From the moment Jesus arrived, he transformed. He transformed a stable into a birth-place for a king, an old feeding trough into a royal bassinet, and a poor young woman into the mother of the Messiah.

I think that’s how it always is. Jesus doesn’t enter our lives looking for the places that are pretty or easy or comfortable. Instead, he comes to us in a new, more vibrant way, and changes us, creating the place where wonder is born.

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Adapted from Wrestling with Wonder: A Transformational Journey through the Life of Mary. Learn More