Wednesday, December 20, 2006
BORN IN A BARN
What would we think today of someone who had that on his birth certificate? Peasant. Third World. Illegitimate.
Imagine being in labor and not having anywhere to go to get out of public view. Imagine a sterile delivery room with a donkey and a cow in the corner. No, I really can't imagine it either.
If you've ever stood in a barn, you know that they are not the cleanest place. Grain brings chaff and dust. Unwelcome little critters usually follow the grain, leaving calling cards here and there. Freshly cut straw hides the bugs that called it home in the field, and now in the barn. Resident animals don't know the difference between inside and outside when answering the demands of nature. If there are chickens in the barn, they are most likely accompanied by rats. The floor is rarely if ever swept.
A barn can be a fun place for a kid to play in the daylight. Hay is soft to jump in. A rope over a beam makes a swing. Castles and forts can be constructed out of the things that end up in barn corners, or the hay bales if dad isn't looking. An idle tractor can be Cindarella's coach or a Sherman tank depending on the game. There are countless places to hide in and jump from, and plenty of animals around to pet or ride on. A game of "I dare you" takes on new meaning if there is a rafter to walk three stories above the floor.
I've played in a barn with my cousins who were much better at all of the games than this city girl could ever be. I've watched them ride the calves and tried to catch the cats, and let the cow lick my hand. I've walked gingerly around the pig wallow and played follow-the-leader through the hen coop while the rats scampered. All of it in the daytime. I did not step into the barn at night. There were too many dark shapes and too many eyes glowing. Small rustlings loom large when you can't see the source.
When I see a picture of the stable where Christ was born, I think of the barn, and I think of delivering a baby there at night. It looks so romantic on the Christmas cards, but a stable is really a barn, and a barn is not romantic even in the daytime.
Looking at the pictures, I wonder if the animals smelled bad, if it was cold, if His mother had any privacy to deliver her baby, or did she worry that a stranger would see. Did she have a light of some sort? Was she afraid of childbirth? Was she embarrassed to have Joseph present and afraid to ask him to leave?
What was really a grim termination of pregnancy has become the subject of some of the most glorious music. I had "A Tenors Christmas" on the CD player today while I was baking. If a barn is to be a palace, Pavoratti can make it happen. How can something so beautiful be inspired by something so pedestrian? How can this helpless mother and newborn child at their first meeting taking place in a barn be the subject of such sentiment 2,000 years later?
This baby has brought many miracles down through history. Today the miracle for me was a Christmas carol sung about a long ago baby born in a barn.
