John 16:21 A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her JOY that a child is born into the world.************************
We have glorified the manger. By that I mean that we have such lovely, sweet pictures and manger displays set up that look like something from Currier and Ives. We forget that there the Christ Child was born at night in a place that wasn't a house. So it was probably freezing cold. And it was dark. Oh, there may have been an olive oil lantern or a candle burning. But Mary and Joseph were travelling and weren't very rich. So I'll bet you couldn't see very well. And there were animals most likely there - or had been kept there for years. The smell, um, you know what I mean. And if there were animals in there, they were probably very restless and noisy because their nice quiet barn had been invaded.
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Close your eyes and visualize with me. Feel the cold. Imagine it's hard to see in the dark. Smell the animals. Hear a restless sheep piercing the night with his high pitched bleats.
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Now imagine you are a teenager who has never even been intimate, in labor. Truly God did something amazing bringing Jesus into the world in this way; this place. Our verse today calls childbirth under any circumstances anguish.
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But imagine Mary's joy when Jesus was born and she looked into the eyes of the Son of God! Maybe that's why the manger scene looks so lovely and sweet.
