Overread at Booth 1: So Much Is Said About the Manger

349.

 

so much is made about the manger.

we now well know that the wisemen didn’t get there until
He was about two years old, which somehow doesn’t make us wonder
why didn’t anybody notice the star was following this
infant all over Israel?

and the trough, nobody seems to know that he

was laid, justborn and newly mewling, in the place
where animals ate.  why don’t we teach this?
we debate with our children if the ox and the lamb kept time.
and we hear nothing about the shepherds, just boys themselves,

who grew up, eventually had newly mewling babies themselves,

not born in mangers, but
who, when in their late teens, at the start of manhood,
on some hillside, they

heard this slightly older man speaking to them from

a boat out in the lake, his voice carried to them across the water,
which they heard,
and instinctively,

walked out onto the waves to follow Him.

 

from 366.