Of Smelly Stables and Messy Lives

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Smelly Stables and Messy LivesSoon after 9-11, I found my heart so full of poetry, it had to get out.  So I have pages and pages of it.  It was just a season and a time in which I found an outlet and joy in writing poetry.  The interesting part is that I haven’t experienced that kind of imparted gift since then.  I hope to see it come back around.  But in case it never does, I am thankful for the clarity of expression I experienced during this season of poetry.

Below I wrote this, as an expression of how we fill our lives with so much that we cannot hear and cannot see and cannot do the main thing that Jesus asks of us every day.  Ever since that day when Mary and Joseph went around looking for a place to rest and bring forth the Hope of the Nations and they ended up in a stable, Jesus is still looking for a place to be born in us.

It is a confounding thing–God Incarnate wrapped in swaddling and placed in an animal trough. And as many “pretties” as we’d like to add to the picture, as we decorate our homes and nativities this season, there really is no getting past the smell of a stable.  Even with a daily cleaning, the whole place is like a scented candle of urine and animal poop. The Light of the World came into our noisy and smelly world to be born.

The Breath of God came to be born in each of us–into our noisy, smelly, sinful selves. 

We try to avoid really looking at it this way.  

We try to make it seem so cleaned up.

We try to make ourselves seem less sinful and smelly.

We try to act like we “get it”, but we don’t.  

We cannot conceive the mind of God.

But we can receive it!   We CAN receive Jesus Himself  in us…the Hope of Glory residing in our less than sparkling stables.

We can do this right this very moment and not a moment too soon!

We need only ENTER INTO THE STORY.

Room in the Inn

Crowding out the still small Voice…
Filling life with every noise.
Unconsciously, we cheat ourselves.
Dissatisfied–placed on a shelf.

Our ears, we fill with sound,
Our eyes, don’t look around,
Our STOMACH’S filled to the brim…
so there’s no room for Him!

Oh, Christian let Him be born.
INSIDE you, all is torn.
Every direction pulled today…
Let Jesus fill in every way.

Be aware of all within–
Come Savior, there’s room in my Inn!

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Holly Smith
October 3, 2001

Stephanie Shott
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