No Place.

“And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”

Luke 2:7

Musical chairs: I wasn’t ever really a fan. I can still see the scene from my kindergarten: small, wooden, round-topped chairs in a circle facing outward, one fewer than the number of us walking around them while some music played. Our teacher arbitrarily stopping the music and everyone scrambling to find a seat . . .

. . . except one lost soul for whom there was no chair left: me.

I don’t know what tore me up more about this “game,” the idea that I was left outside the circle, or the scrabbling of some of the more desperate to force-fit two people into a single chair, or the staring grins of those seated, “Music’s stopped. I’ve got mine. I’m in. You’re . . . out.”

And then, as if that humiliation were not enough, we had to then remove a chair, and repeat the entire cycle so others who had previously been included could eventually know the public and private sting of being excluded.

Childhood can be brutal. But is it possible there may be, even in this nightmarish game, ideas that began with Jesus’ birth 2,000 years ago that can help us today?

The Arrival

The scripture story of Jesus’ arrival contains the familiar idea that when his parents approached Bethlehem to find a place to stay, they couldn’t. There was no place for them.

Why was that?

When we consider all the detailed provision and guidance God established for this little family before, during and after the birth of Jesus, why, at this crucial moment, was there no place for them in Bethlehem, the focus of their trip?

For many years, I wrote this off as a logistical feature: just too many people looking for too few rooms, but recently, I have wondered . . .

Is there something more for us in the fact there was no place for them in Bethlehem?

Something More

When Jesus came, He turned our whole understanding of God and True Life upside down. Reality, He said, isn’t what you think it is or seems. For example, He said there is:

• strength in weakness
• elevation in humility
• justice for the unjust
• love for the unloving, unloved, unlovable inside each of us
• this thing called, Grace.

He said those who work to keep their lives will lose them, and those who freely give them up will find and keep them.

In short, He came to say our current thinking has no place in the Way.

It doesn’t fit.

His family’s not being able to find a place in Bethlehem could have been affirmation of God’s message that He hadn’t come to find a home in this world, making it more comfortable or beautiful:

He’d come to replace it with something new, beautiful and eternal.

He’d come to eliminate our darkness-ridden thoughts that keep us mired in death and to align the places in our heart with the durable, light-laden, trustworthy ideas of His Eternal Kingdom, where:

• We can trust God, because there’s no place for fear
• We can love others, because there’s no place for hatred
• We can focus on serving, because there’s no place for self-centeredness
• We can know individuals, because there’s no place for bigotry

Listening

And, like musical chairs, as we invite Him into our living, He invites us to walk with him in a continual sorting and sifting of our ideas, thoughts and behaviors. His Holy Spirit leads us in discerning which are true and which are not true, which fit and which do not. His companionship transforms us as we accept His Way and release our own.

No place for Him? He’s inviting us inside from the outside, because there with and in Him, we know True Life.

The music’s stopped: where are you?

“So Jesus again said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.'”

John 10:7-11

SMOOTHSTONE: We can trust God as we let go of ourselves and embrace Him to live abundantly.