GOD IN A CAVE
Those who study
such things closely insist that the manger of Jesus' birth was in a cave and
not in a barn-like structure. It really doesn't matter. But there is something
fanciful in the thought of His coming as a cave-dweller. We are reminded of
those cavemen of ancient history of whom we see traces by finding drawings of
animals on the walls of their former homes.
And now we have another drawer of
animals. He who traced the shape of animals and man and brought them to life
now is found in a cave Himself. What a paradox! The hands that made the sun and
stars are now too small to reach the heads of the cattle. On this paradox our
faith is built. It is such an extreme conjunction-the world creator and a baby
boy, omnipotence and impotence, divinity and infancy. It is such a remarkable
combination that a million repetitions cannot make it sound trite or common.
Perhaps it is one of the few circumstances qualifying for the title
"unique", (cf, G.K. Chesterton:
Orthodoxy).
The common man has been wrong in
many things throughout history. Devoted people have been scorned by the
educated cosmopolitans who deal with lofty thoughts, cold reasoning, logical
conclusions and unfathomable abstractions. But the common man was close to
being correct when in his pagan worship he had been promoting the idea that
divinity could be seen and could live in the limits of time and space. For in
the cave where the manger was. God was dwelling. God in a cave. It is a
revolution, the world is turned upside down. Heaven is on earth, or under the
earth, in a cave, in Jesus.
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