National Geographic several years ago told a story of the commitment of genuine love.  After a forest fire in Yellowstone National Park, forest rangers began their trek up a mountain to assess the inferno’s damage. One ranger found a bird literally petrified in ashes, perched statuesquely on the ground at the base of a tree. Somewhat sickened by the eerie sight, he knocked over the bird with a stick. When he struck it, three tiny chicks scurried from under their dead mother’s wings. The loving mother, keenly aware of impending disaster, had carried her offspring to the base of the tree and had gathered them under her wings, instinctively knowing that the toxic smoke would rise. She could have flown to safety but had refused to abandon her babies. When the blaze had arrived and the heat had scorched her small body, the mother had remained steadfast. Because she had been willing to die, those under the cover of her wings would live!

The actions of that bird speak of the commitment of love that draws out of a man the heroism that protects and provides for his wife and family. From where does such love arise? From He who is love personified. It is the nature of God.

“He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shall thou trust….” Psalm 91:4

“Jesus was born in a stable, a real stable, not the bright, airy portico which Christian painters have created for the Son of David, as if ashamed that their God should have lain down in poverty and dirt. And not the modern Christmas-eve ‘Holy Stable’ either, made of plaster of Paris, with little candy-like statuettes, the Holy Stable, clean and prettily painted, with a neat, tidy manger, an ecstatic Ass, a contrite Ox, and Angels fluttering their wreaths on the roof – this is not the stable where Jesus was born.

“A real stable is the house, the prison of the animals who work for man. The poor, old stable of Christ’s old, poor country is only four rough walls, a dirty pavement, a roof of beams and slate. It is dark, reeking. The only clean thing in it is the manger where the owner piles the hay and fodder.

“Fresh in the clear morning, waving in the wind, sunny, lush, sweet-scented, the spring meadow was mown. The green grass, the long, slim blades were cut down by the scythe; and with the grass the beautiful flowers in full bloom – white, red, yellow, blue. They withered and dried and took on the one dull color of hay. Oxen dragged back to the barn the dead plunder of May and June. And now that grass has become dry hay and those flowers, still smelling sweet, are there in the Manger to feed the slaves of man. The animals take it slowly with their great black lips, and later the flowering fields, changed into moist dung, return to light on the litter which serves as bedding.

“This is the real stable where Jesus was born. The filthiest place in the world was the first room of the only Pure Man ever born of woman. The Son of Man, who was to be devoured by wild beast calling themselves men, had as His first cradle the manger where the animals chewed the cud of the miraculous flowers of Spring.

“It was not by chance that Christ was born in a stable. What is the world but an immense stable where men produce filth and wallow in it? Do they not daily change the most beautiful, the purest, the most divine things in excrements? Then, stretching themselves at full length on the piles of manure, they say they are ‘enjoying life.’ Upon this earthly pig-sty, where no decorations or perfumes can hide the odor of filth, Jesus appeared one night, born of a stainless Virgin armed only with innocence.”

Giovanni Papini, Life of Christ, p. 21-22. Translated from Italian by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

It is true - Jesus was content with a stable the night He was born so you could have a mansion the day that you die.

Orphans are the closest earthly reality to the each person’s spiritual poverty. Listen to God’s description of an unsaved person:

“…ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having ho hope, and without God in the world;” (Colossians 2:12).

No hope. But the next verse begins “But now in Christ Jesus….” God took pity on our hopeless condition and provided hope through Jesus Christ. Now we are IN a family, provided for, loved and we look to a bright and glorious future of hope.

Many people, on an earthly dimension, provide temporal hope to precious children who are without hope – orphans. It is doubly glorious when that temporal hope turns into eternal hope with an orphan is adopted into a Christian family and they grow up to meet Jesus Christ. What an amazing difference is made!

“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27).

On November 13^th we celebrate Orphan Sunday here at CBC.