Holydays tend to mask our emptiness and longing to be filled. The red wine you drank away at dusk wanes with dawn as morning sobers you up. Pork steaks satisfy no heart, and night-long banter wearies your head to bed. The long-awaited celebration time vanishes as vapor in cold winter—as though it never was. You sure are merry, but do you belong? You are lost, and who can find you?
Many hearts seek satisfaction in a mirage, an illusion of Christmas convergences and village visitations. The birth of Christ comes at a time of such convergencies, a census. Caesar had demanded that everyone return to where they belong— “each to his own town” (Luke 2:3). But it is in their own town that “there was no place” for Joseph and Mary “in the inn” (v. 7). Gatherings at home did not guarantee a place for Joseph and Mary—or Jesus.
The world’s Savior could find no room among those he came to save. Their inns were full of things that made them empty. As they made merry, they made Mary homeless with her baby—their Savior.
Now, this Christmas, you may be the innkeeper—seeking fulfillment from things that make no room for Christ. You may be too busy chasing chicken for the knife that you have no space to meditate on the Prince of Life. You may be engaged in reunions. So good as such reunions may be, they may have no room to discuss the reunion of God the Son with our humanity that brings healing and restoration.
That the fullness of all things couldn’t find an empty inn for himself is condemnation for the world that fills God’s space with other things. But that we keep stuffing things in God’s inn—our heart—shows how empty we are. Yet, the stuff from which we seek profit is bound to disappoint us. Today’s pork will be tomorrow’s past. We grow but growl, as failures and fears make us faithless—and hopeless.
But this Christmas too, you may be like Joseph and Mary—home but homeless. You have nowhere to belong, excluded and ignored. The good news for you is that nothing is impossible with God. With no room in the inn, Christ was born in a manger. That baby—God incarnate—has made room for you in his Kingdom. Now you can belong. You can genuinely be merry. God, homeless among humans, has made an eternal home for you. God has found you, in your lostness.
To the innkeeper, let this day not mask your emptiness to be filled. Let it point to the fullness of God, who fulfills the deepest human need—our need to belong and be filled with transcendent fullness. Be merry, but belong. Open your inn for the Savior to be born, for he is here, knocking at the door—your heart.