Filthy Night, Fetid Night
I picture a clean, sweet Nativity scene. But Jesus chose to come to a dirty, broken world.
When I think about the night of Jesus’ birth, the first picture that comes to mind is straight from my childhood. It’s like I’m peering into a snow globe manger scene. Hallmark Channel perfect, it’s clean and serene. Everyone is in the correct place. Snow falls softly, blanketing the hillside in a carpet of quiet. All is calm. All is bright. Give it a good shake, and nothing falls out of place. The snow gently swirls, then settles over the pristine couple and silent baby once again.
But that image is quickly crowded by another. Nearly 15 years ago, my husband and I lived in a dusty Chinese village on the outskirts of Beijing. We volunteered for four years at New Day Foster Home, a private, Christian nonprofit organization that—in those days, before the Chinese government limited the work of NGOs across the country—helped fund surgeries and provided long-term foster care for medically fragile orphans. We lived in an apartment complex about a mile from the organization’s campus, and most mornings we walked behind a flock of sheep and their shepherd on our way to work.
I recently reread what I wrote in my journal at the time, a description of that shepherd’s stable. You could smell it before you saw it. Fetid and filthy, the sheep crowded in at the end of a day of foraging for food. In the summer, flies buzzed. In the winter, sludge froze solid. I didn’t want to go near; it was too dirty.
I would pass the sheep and their shepherd, pitying him a little, silently thankful that my own job didn’t require me to mess around in muck. Around Christmas, I pictured my Savior born amid fresh, sweet hay in an inexplicably warm and comforting stable. The ...