Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room

It happened on that busy pre-Christmas Saturday, amidst the whirl and spin of preparation.

 

 

The light bulbs began raining.

Or more specifically, it began raining out of the light bulbs.

That’s what my four year old said as he ran for help, when, as he was sitting in the living room he saw water raining from the ceiling out of the living room light bulb.

No one believed him at first.  But he was thankfully persistent and in a moment people came running to see this spectacle of amazement, this miracle of sorts.  Because who ever heard of raining light bulbs?

And where was Momma?  Well, I was Christmas shopping on the one day that there was time for that.  And Daddy was in charge.  He said it happened in five minutes.  In five amazing minutes our two year old, who apparently was raised by chimpanzees, climbed up on the toilet, then from the toilet he climbed up onto the sink, from there he reached up into the mirror medicine cabinet and proceeded to pull out every single thing in it and dump it into the sink.  Then, he had the most grand and glorious idea, to turn on the water.  And he chose the sink which is always partially clogged and five minutes of water running full blast and we have… raining light bulbs.

So, I walk into the house after fighting crowds at stores and into crying chaos and a flood that reaches from the second story, into the basement. 

And I would like to tell you that this kind of event is a fluke, but this is the second time in two weeks that chimpanzee- two- year- old has climbed up onto the sink and emptied the medicine cabinet into the sink.  The last time involved a call to poison control and thankfully no injuries or actual poisoning.  And after that the medicine cabinet was emptied of everything but band-aids and nail clippers and the like. 

And I would like to tell you that we haven’t had rotovirus for seven days straight and that this Momma hasn’t been sipping peppermint tea for dear life, and wishing desperately that Momma’s of six homeschooled kids got sick days, but they don’t.  But if I said that all this didn’t happen, that would be untrue and listen, this is just what life is sometimes.

Let every heart prepare Him room. 

But somewhere in chaos and crazy of our broken world, Christmas still comes.

It comes because Christ came.

He came into our broken, into our mess.  Into our dirty and shameful, into our stable, God stepped into our world.  He didn’t come into a clean hospital room.  Or even into a tidy house.  No, the God of the universe stepped down into our messy world and was born in a barn with the stink and the sounds of animals, and the filth. 

He came to us.

He came to a Momma who felt unprepared, unable, maybe just a little afraid of what might lie ahead.

He came to us amidst the danger of a crazed king trying to take his life, amidst the scandal of an unmarried momma, amidst the dirt of us.

He still came.

And He came for us.

He came to make us, the crazy, the broken, the humble, to make us a part of His family.

And this gives me hope.

The hope of Christmas is that God, himself, came.  He came down into our sin stained world and enacted a grand and glorious rescue plan to bring us back to Him forever. 

He didn’t shy away from our chaos, our failures, our troubles, he came right in the middle of it.

To prove his great love for us, His children (whom He sometimes wonders if they were raised by chimpanzees?) and to make a family out of a glorious mess.

Listen, your Christmas may not be tidy.  It may not be quiet.  It may be full of chaos, you might be slightly unprepared.  Your kids may not be on their best behavior and all might be less than perfect.

But God still comes to you, friend. 

He comes.  Let every heart prepare Him room. 

And if your room is a little messy, He is ok with that.