Don’t Stop At The Manger

I have a confession to make; at the beginning of the season, my heart was not in the right place to truly celebrate Christmas this year.

Yes, I grew up in Church hearing the Christmas story multiple times every December. I’ve read the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke a hundred times, and I’ve been told at least two hundred times that Christmas is really about Jesus coming to earth and being born in a dirty barn; but that is only part of the story, because Christmas is really just as much about a Savior on a cross as it is of a baby in a manger. Jesus’ miraculous birth and the events surrounding it don’t have much meaning or purpose without the rest of the story. Our timeless and boundless God came to us so we can have a way to get to Him; we lose the meaning and the wonder of the ‘how’ when we ignore the ‘why’. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, and that’s everybody on planet Earth.

So please, don’t make the mistake I did; don’t let the season fly by without remembering just how much manger and the cross are intertwined. Don’t bend your knee to the baby in Bethlehem and forget that He came to be our Savior at Calvary. Don’t stop at the manger; you will miss part of the story and the meaning of the celebration.