Who Would Have Chosen This?

I’ve tried over and over to sit down and write this post – to capture what is in my heart this Christmas, but this is one of those times when my words fail me.

Tucked in the pages of my journal is a poem I found earlier this year and I think it does a better job than I ever could of expressing what I’m thinking.  It reads:

Let the stable still astonish;
Straw – dirt floor, dull eyes;
Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;
Crumbling, crooked walls;
No bed to carry that pain,
And then, the child,
Rag-wrapped, laid to cry
In a trough.
Who would have chosen this?

Who would have said: ‘Yes.
Let the God of all the heavens
And earth
Be born here, in this place’?
Who but the same God
Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms
of our hearts
and says, ‘Yes.
Let the God of Heaven and Earth
be born here --
in this place.’

In these days leading up to Christmas, I want to, “Let the stable still astonish,” and to marvel that God chose to come dwell, “in the darker, fouler room” of my heart.

Who would have chosen this? God did, and I’m forever grateful.