The Miracle of Hospitality

Luke 2:1-7
By Harold Dinsmore, M.Div.
© 2007 Harold Dinsmore

            Sometimes when we are waiting for Christmas, we horse around so much, we busy ourselves so much, that we miss the very thing we are waiting for.  Sometimes we get so involved in the tasks and details of Christmas that we forget the One we are honoring.  Five little words in the Gospel of Luke say it all:  NO room in the inn.  Luke 2:7

            Let’s be honest.  Isn’t this our problem?  We get so busy, so tired, so preoccupied with the incessant demands on our crowed and hectic lives that we shut out the very birth of the Master we so long to know.

            Some years ago I ran across a poem.  The poem suggests we are very much like that little in Bethlehem at the first Christmas.  Our lives too, get so crowded and so filled up that we don’t have room for Christ.  The poem concludes with these poignant lines.  “Like the Bethlehem in we have no hostile feeling. We merely crowd him out.