Ask Augustine with Dr. Paul Tambrino
Ask Augustine is a weekly column where professor/author Dr. Paul Tambrino discusses various theological questions with wit, clarity and substance.
Question #42 – This Christmas, Will You Have Room In Your Heart for Jesus?
There are few, if any words, more poignant than these, “because there was no room for them in the inn” (Lk. 2:7).
How tragic that when Jesus was born into this world, there was no room for Him here on earth. There was no room for Him at His birth.
Someone put it very well when he said that Jesus was born in another man’s stable, laid in another man’s manger, preached from another man’s boat, road another man’s colt, ate the final supper in another man’s room, died on another man’s cross for other men’s sin, and He was laid in another man’s tomb.“Tragically, though twenty centuries have come and gone, there is still no room for Him in this world.”
There was just not any place for Him in this world. We never even provided Him a place to die. We lifted Him up off the earth and between heaven and earth He hung and He died.
There was no room on earth for Him, an earth that He created, an earth for which He gave His life.
Tragically, though twenty centuries have come and gone, there is still no room for Him in this world.
There is no room for Him in our schools. We can teach humanism, secularism, atheism and evolutionism, but there is no room for Christ in our school’s curriculum.
There is no room for Him in our parks. The city of San Jose, California, does not permit a nativity scene on public property, yet decades ago they spent a half million dollars of taxpayer money to build a huge statue to Quetzalcoatl, and millions since to maintain it.“There was just not any place for Him in this world. We never even provided Him a place to die. We lifted Him up off the earth and between heaven and earth He hung and He died.”
Quetzalcoatl is the great god of the Aztecs, to whom hundreds of thousands of human beings were sacrificed; with their hands tied behind them as they were led up the steps of great pyramids. Then their bodies were cut from one end to the other, and thrown off the pyramids.
The city park in San Jose has room for a statue of this Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, but there seems to be no room on city property for a manger with the baby Jesus.
There is no room for Jesus in our department stores and shopping malls either. You’ll find displays featuring Santa, Frosty and Rudolph, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a manger scene.
Many parades that used to commemorate Christmas are now called “holiday” or “winter-fest” parades.
Tune into most radio stations during the Christmas season, and you will hear songs about Christmas without one word about Christ.“And yet, although we had, and continue to have, no room for Him, He lived, died and was resurrected to heaven to prepare a place for us.”
There are millions in this country today who will have no room for Jesus this Christmas season because of ignorance, because of spiritual ignorance.
You see all of us want to be kings; we want to be king of our own domain. “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. I will be the sovereign ruler over my own life.”
“After all it’s my body, isn’t it? I can do with it what I want, can’t I? I am king of my life, and I will broach no interference from any usurper Christ who wants to take His place upon the throne of my life. I am king of my life. There are things I want to do that He doesn’t approve of and I don’t want Him coming into my life.”
And yet, although we had, and continue to have, no room for Him, He lived, died and was resurrected to heaven to prepare a place for us. What kind of a place? A stable?
No. Rather a mansion in heaven. That is the indescribable, incredible grace and condescension of God, that though we rejected Him, He is willing to accept us by His pure grace.
So this Christmas season, let us repent of our sins, receive Christ into the room in our hearts, and trust Him as our Lord and Savior…
“Let not our hearts be busy inns, that have no room for Thee,
But cradles for the living Christ, and His Nativity.
Still driven by a thousand cares, the pilgrims come and go,
The hurried caravans press on, the inns are crowded so.
Here are the rich and busy ones, with things that must be sold,
No room for helpless hands within, the hostelry of gold.
Yet hunger dwell within these walls, these shining walls and bright,
And blindness groping here and there, without a ray of light.
Oh, lest we starve, and lest we die, in our stupidity,
Come, Thou Child, within and share, our hospitality.
Let not our hearts be busy inns, that have no room for Thee,
But cradles for the living Christ, and His Nativity.
Have you room in your heart for Jesus?”
-Ralph Spaulding Cushman
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Image Credit
Anton Raphael Mengs, The Adoration of the Shepherds, c. 1764/1765. The National Gallery of Art. 2014.136.114.