Journey to the Manger

Advent 2024 is upon us as we at Holy Trinity take a "Journey to the Manger." My first real look at a manger came in the fall of 1966 when I visited one of my college friends at his farm in Grand Meadow, Minnesota. Jim and his family ran a good size family farm with cornfields, beef cattle, a saw mill and a small plot of popcorn corn. When we went into the barn I had my first experience of a working livestock feeding area with , yes, a fairly large manger. It was filled with hay and a pregnant momma cow had her nose in the hay. I remember the Christmas story words popping into my head, "and they wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in the manger." About a year before this I was singing the words from the Messiah, "King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and he shall reign forever and ever. Hallelujah!" The juxtaposition of these two things was a little unsettling. The powerful words of the Messiah and the powerful odor of the barn. At the core of our story with the Creator is that His son, the one who we are to follow and try to imitate has such humble beginnings, it is hard to imagine Jesus could accomplish much. Still he was the hope for the world. He would speak of love. He would proclaim that although there is much darkness in the world, brought about by ideas of greed and power, the darkness will not, cannot, must not win! So, he spoke of loving the Creator, he spoke of loving even yourself as one created by God, (God don't make no junk), love of the stranger and the foreigner, love of even those who hate you, love of the enemy. These ideas, these spiritual truths, were planted in human hearts, claimed by human souls to be the truth by which we are called to live. We, you and I, not only claim all these messages of hope but we also become messengers of hope, the deliverers of peace, joy and love. We will keep lighting candles in the darkness so that all can live in the promise of hope. Keep traveling the path to the manger where we find the source of hope, peace, joy and love. Along the way, PN