We Don't Have It That Bad

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born,

 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.

 She wrapped him in cloths 

and placed him in a manger, 

because there was no guest room available for them.

Luke 2:6-7

My daughter and I were talking the other day about the delivery of her first child.  The hospital was so crowded that they sent her home to wait out her intense labor.  When she couldn't stand it anymore, they went back to the hospital, waited in the waiting room a long while and then in the hall and finally in a partitioned room with about three others...all in labor.  Everything worked well, praise the Lord, and she delivered a beautiful little girl.

When I think of those circumstances as compared with the birth of Christ, I realized that she really didn't have it "that" bad.

  I'll can never begin to understand the emotions that must have swept over Mary at her first child's birth...not at all what she had dreamed...not at all what the picture above depicts.  Yet, in that humble and very dirty cattle stall, she delivered 

The Mighty King.

Hallelujah!

Antique Christmas card from personal files