I have told this before so please forgive me. I was listening to a guy
preach, he passed away many years ago, and he was a cowboy. He owned a
ranch for the deaf in the state of Tennessee. He would bring in 1500 deaf
people at different times to the ranch for free during the summer. Many
times, churches with deaf ministries, would bus their deaf to his ranch.
This man could hear fine and so could everyone in his family so I never
heard how it came about he started this ranch. Anyhow, his name was Bill
Rice. One time he got to go to the Bible lands. In Bethlehem, he was
walking around by himself when he stopped at a place that looked like it
could have been a place where Mary and Joseph tried to stop but were turned
away to the stable. A man who could speak English asked Bill what he was
doing and he said he was trying to find something that looked like a stable
where Jesus would have been born. The man told him he would show him. They
walked for awhile until they came to a cave. Bill asked what this was for
and the man said, This is where animals are kept. They were not kept in
barns as you have in the United States but hundreds of these caves are all
over our country and are used for keeping animals. In my opinion, he said,
your Jesus would have much more come to being born in a cave like this than
a nice warm barn or stable. Bill asked if he could go inside. The man
said, yes, but that Bill wouldn't like it. Bill had on his cowboy boots on
and stepped into the dark cave. The pungent smell of animals and everything
they produce nearly knocked him out and this was a man used to barns and
animal smells. He tried walking around but his boots literally sank in the
manure which came to the tops of his boots. That's how deep it was. There
was a manger, of course, but Bill said it had the greatest impact on him he
had ever known before concerning the birth of our Lord. I know the Bible
says Jesus was born in a stable but I also imagine these caves were called
stables, too. Every time I think of Christmas and the manger, I think of my
uncle's farm in Kansas. We used to love playing in the barn even in the
winter. One Christmas, we drove from Iowa to Kansas and while at my
cousin's house, we put on coats and gloves, because it was super cold, and
went to the barn. We climbed around and played tag in the hay loft and
throughout the large barn. They raised cows but none were in the barn this
afternoon so we got to run all over playing tag. They had a huge manger
that we climbed in and out of and rolled around in the hay trying to keep
away from whoever it was trying to tag us at the time. You could get from
one part of the barn to another by climbing through the manger because it
was built into the wall so the cows couldn't come into the other side of the
barn. As I said, I remember this manger every year because I vaguely
remember rolling through the hay in the manger as we played and it crossing
my mind that perhaps Jesus was born in something just like what I was
playing in. The story of Bill Rice going into that cave will never leave my
mind. Regardless, Jesus was born in a manger. The Creator of the universe
was born in a manger and given birth by a virgin. Try and top that. Oh,
sure, you can dismiss it by saying, it never happened; Jesus was just a man,
or something like, the Bible isn't true. That's fine. You can believe
whatever you like. Jesus still loves you just as much as He does me, too,
even if you don't believe in him. Of course, if you keep this unbelief up,
you won't wind up in the same place I do at the end of God's time table but
you are free to believe whatever you want. Oh, that makes you mad? You
don't like having your arm twisted and forced to believe? No one is forcing
you to do a thing. If there is no hell and no Heaven, you have nothing to
worry about. If there is, take your complaint about God's plan to the
Creator of the universe, the one born in a manger? And see if you can get
Him to change the rules in the middle, or now near the end, of the game,
sort of speak.
Phil.
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