The Lord would later say to Peter of his faith, "On this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." It is possible He recalled the stone capital that protected Him from chilly winds and trampling feet on that Christmas night the shepherds came breathlessly into the stable (Matt. 16:18). As Jesus marched triumphantly into Jerusalem that Sunday of the Palms, the Lord's antagonists urged Him to stop the noisy adultation of the throngs praising Him as King. Said Jesus, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out" (Luke 19:40). He may have remembered the lullaby of the manger -- He who managed birth and life and death and resurrection -- and how the stone sang in the stillness of that night.

Thus, when the error creeps up again -- of 'manager' instead of 'manger' -- and it will for centuries ahead, enough evidence exists in the Bible and life to prove it is no mistake, but the holy purpose for which Jesus came: to manage death with life, and sin with forgiveness, and hate with love. For if a manger, a feedbox, can become so important to this beginning story of Jesus' mission on Earth as to be mentioned three times in Luke's retelling of the event, is it not possible that we may learn something more about it now? Wood or stone, it's the One sleeping there we have come to know as the bedrock of faith. While the cross was made of wood, the door over His tomb was Judean stone. He sent it wheeling away on Easter Day so that death could die and life would live forever. Thus it would be fitting that Christmas begins in a stone manger as it ended with a stone door pushed aside, and that both the beginning was in a cave and the ending too, so that we need never fear either the new starts in life or the old endings that must come.

It is because Away in a Manger was born that this marvelous Manager makes sense out of strange things and joy out of despair. Come, then, to this manger so that Christ can manage your sin with the power of His love and offer you in body and blood the best gift for your Christmas -- Himself. Amen.

1. Egbert, Wilson O, quoted in The Gifts They Gave in Christmas, Vol. 52 (Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis; 1982), p. 31.

2. Killinger, John, Christmas Spoken Here (Nashville: Broadman, 1989), p. 27.