We Meet Him in a Stable

I don't know what day of the year Jesus was born,

    but symbolically it must have been Christmas -

        the time of the year with least light,

            least life,

                and most cold.

 

Was thinking this morning,

"all God's children must be born in a stable."

The stable was not a dwelling for man - it was a place "beyond."

    Man always seeks Him in the familiar, safe, places of his own living -

        but this word "beyond" rings within me now. 

Jesus life was a life "beyond" -

    until at the last He left this earth in a place beyond the city,

         beyond the dwellings and pathways of men.

 

When His earthly life had ended, 

    the angel had to say to Mary "He is not here." 

He had gone beyond death. 

 

We celebrate Jesus coming -

but do we realize His birth was the beginning of Him "emptying Himself?"

    And as we come to Him we can only come 

    empty of all that this world has given us.

If we are to really find Him we will find Him in the place beyond all

   that we have surrounded ourselves with in this transitory world.

 

We will meet Him if we come to the stable.

Found

 

The bride in Song of Solomon faced a dilemma (chapter 3):
When the day ended and the day's activity ceased,
     when she had eaten her last meal, and laid off the day's apparel,
          she sought her beloved - and said "I found him not"

She made her decision, and rose again from her rest to seek him.

She sought him among the habitations of men,
     through the streets, the paths and walks laid out by men, through the city.
She asked those who watch over man's world for her beloved,
     and they had no reply.
He was not to be found among anything man made.
Here also she  declares,
     "I found him not."

The next verse tells us that just a little beyond she found Him.
     What a picture - just a little beyond!
          What a lesson - it was when her seeking was free from man's ways and man's things she found in "God's beyond"

God's realm is a spiritual realm - should we be afraid of that?
     Should we be afraid to take the hand of God and go beyond...
          beyond the accepted knowledge of man which fails to satisfy,
               which fails to meet our souls needs?

Think, the blueprints are not the building,
     and the scaffolding is not the building.
The doctrines, the teachings and the forms, are not Life, and unless we find the way of the Spirit we are in death.

Unless the Spirit quicken we seek in vain.

A rabbit may look up at an eagle and wonder why it can't settle down,
and just move at ground level where there are safe pathways regardless of the winds.                                                                                                                           The earthbound rabbit can never understand the sphere of the eagle
which may travel over 200 miles in a day secure in the strength of the winds,
or know the realm of the condor can travel 100 miles without flapping its wings.
     Would they trade their vision, their perspective,
     for the safety of walking on the earth?
     Would they trade their infinite freedom for the safety of a pathway?

The earth of man will always bring forth "thorns and thistles."
We see these not just in the physical earth but in government,
in education and the conduct of society.
Men's efforts to eradicate the curse of his fall must forever fail,
     and only God can restore what has been lost.

Man's present system will crumble and fall,
     until not one stone is  left upon another of our vaunted civilization.
We need to find the Unseen which lies beyond the seen,
     we need to find the Kingdom which will endure.

Yes, the  bride in Song of Solomon faced a dilemma:
she sought her beloved and "found Him not."

She made her decision and sought ...
until beyond the world of men she found Him.
     We may seek with a soul wrenching intensity in the wrong place
     only to say also, "I found Him not."

And yet He awaits us - in His own place and not ours.

Let us go out from our world -
the world of all our experience and all our knowledge.

If we carry but our nakedness, He will be found of us.