What does your nativity scene look like? Is it life-sized and wooden, something you can put out on your front lawn all month? It is made of fragile porcelain and perched on your mantel? Or is it something plastic you can put on the coffee table without worrying about your pets breaking it?
Furthermore, what do you picture when you imagine the original nativity scene? What are the different individuals wearing? Which animals are present? And is the baby Jesus truly giving his weary parents a silent night or is he waking up half of Bethlehem with his cries?
One of the interesting things about our renditions of the nativity is how different they are from the original scene. For thousands of years, European and North American artists have depicted the holy family—Middle Eastern Jews—with white skin and blue eyes. The animals we imagine in the stable that night—unmentioned in Scripture—are often native to Texas but foreign to Bethlehem.
While these little errors and imaginative leaps make our nativity scenes less historically accurate, they speak to a desire to contextualize that glorious night, to bring it close to home and make it easier to grasp. Our modern renditions of that scene speak to a need to not only understand the story, but become a part of it ourselves.
What if we took it one step further this Christmas? What if instead of merely imagining the shepherds, you pursued Christ with their understanding that just a glimpse of his glory would be the greatest blessing? What if you took a page out of Joseph’s book and sought to care even for those who were not your own? What if you not only admired Mary, but followed her example of dutiful love and obedience to God’s calling?
There are hundreds of ways to imagine, to describe, and to contextualize the nativity scene. In this Advent season, may you seek also to live out its lessons.
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