DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Making Room for Jesus

She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. — Luke 2:7

December fills up fast. Calendars, shopping lists, school events, travel, meals, parties, church services, decorations, and people coming and going. We can spend an entire month preparing for Christmas and arrive at Christmas Day having barely thought about Christ. That is an odd possibility, but an easy one.

Luke tells us there was no room available when Jesus was born. We know the verse so well that we can miss the irony. The Creator entered His own world and there was no comfortable place prepared for Him. Two thousand years later, our problem is often different in detail but similar in effect. Life is full, and Jesus gets whatever space is left over.

Making room for Christ does not require turning December into a monastery. Enjoy the tree. Eat the cookies. Buy gifts if you can. Laugh with your family. Those things can be good. The question is whether the celebration points us toward Jesus or simply keeps us too busy to notice Him.

A few quiet minutes can change the rhythm of the season. Read Luke 1 and 2 slowly over several days. Pray before the house wakes up. Put the phone down for ten minutes. Ask your children what they think the Christmas story means. Small pauses can keep the center from disappearing under everything around it.

Making room for Jesus also means making room for people He cares about. The lonely neighbor. The relative who is hard to love. The person working Christmas Eve. The family that cannot afford what everybody else seems to be buying. Christ's presence often arrives through interruptions we did not put on the calendar.

If the season has become a competition, step out of it. Your decorations do not have to impress anybody. Your gifts do not have to match somebody else's budget. Your meal does not have to look like a magazine. Peace is a better gift to bring into a house than perfection.

And if you have made mistakes this year, Christmas is a good time to remember why Jesus came. He did not enter the world because humanity was doing wonderfully. He came because we needed saving. The manger already points toward the cross. Grace is not a side note in the Christmas story. It is the reason for it.

Before the month gets any louder, make some room. Not just in the schedule but in your attention. Sit with the story again. Thank God that He came near. Let the wonder become personal: Christ came into this world for people like us, into lives as crowded and imperfect as ours. There is room for Him here if we choose to make it.