He Came for Failures!

By Lynn Mosher –

I grieve when I fail the Lord, when my obedience lacks its first response.

But then I remember it was for failures that Christ graced a waiting manger. It was for failures that He breathed His last earthly breath as He hung in disgrace on a wooden cross.

It was to a failure, one who penned the precious psalms that touch our hearts in time of need. And, yet, as a man after God’s own heart, sinned and ripped apart his fellowship with the Lord, then repented and repaired it.

It was to a failure, one who had denied Christ three times, that the command of “feed My sheep” was given.

It was to a failure that Jesus gave His first greeting in the Garden of Gethsemane on that initial Easter morn.

It was to a failure who had been the foremost despiser of believers yet became one of the greatest servants of the Gospel, the Lord blessing his ministry and his writings for all time.

I think, no, I know my greatest failure is in closing the inn-door of my heart, telling the Christ-child there is no room to live in my heart, in my circumstances, in every moment of my life.

But He came…amid a firmament full of celestial singers and the cries of an infant. And in the lowly stable, Mary lovingly swaddled the future Sacrifice of the world; her gentleness contrasted with the roughness of the hand-hewn trough in which she placed the tiny Child.

There, the miracle of the manger took place: the empty manger, the harbinger of a destined, wooden cross cradling the tiny body of mankind’s salvation, became full – full of love, full of expectation, full of holiness, and full of humanity.

He came, confined by the boundaries of time and limitations of a physical body.

For failures, He came. For me, He came. For you, He came.

But where does He go to be cradled today? In the manger-hearts of believers.

“How silently, how silently the wondrous Gift is given!

So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heaven.

No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.”

(Third verse of “O Little Town of Bethlehem”)

Is the rough manger of your heart cradling the Babe of salvation?

God still seeks His mangers…hearts willing to hold Him. For this…He came!