Who gets the room?
According to Conde Nast Travel Magazine, the #1 hotel in the world for 2021 was La Mamounia in Marrakech, Morocco. Since the early 1900’s “everyone” has stayed there, from FDR to Churchill to movie stars. Many times, a hotel becomes famous for the persons who stayed there. I doubt that I’ll ever stay at La Mamounia.
A few years ago, Diane and I stayed in a hotel in Wales called Ruthin Castle Hotel, which was originally built by King Edward I. We stayed in the room that made the hotel famous. It was the Prince of Wales Suite, where HRH Prince Charles stayed the night before his investiture as Prince of Wales. Really great room.
Ruthin Castle Hotel has become a top destination hotel in north Wales, in large part, due to its famous guest decades ago. I don’t think they ever hesitated to make their best room available for Prince Charles.
It makes me wonder just how famous throughout history that small inn in the city of Bethlehem might have become… if…some two thousand years ago, it had made room for a traveling carpenter and his pregnant wife who was about to give birth to the incarnate God, Jesus Christ.
“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” Luke 2:7 KJV
Instead, the birth took place in a stable/cave nearby. What a missed opportunity! Maybe even today, we would have known that inn by name. Couldn’t they have made room for the King of Kings?
I guess we should go easy on that Bethlehem Inn. After all, they didn’t really know who it was that they sent away without a room. They had no way of knowing.
But I know. No excuses. I know who it is that asks for room in my heart.
And I know that at this Christmas time, I don’t want to be like the Bethlehem Inn. In all the hustle and bustle of this Christmas season I want to make sure that I make room for Jesus. Sounds like a given, doesn’t it? But with all the shopping, gift wrapping, dinners, going to see Christmas lights, visiting family, family and friends visiting us, winding up my businesses, vacating my office space, buying and delivering the meals and gift cards, finishing the year-end tax activities, and preparing for our trip to the beach, I find myself having to be careful to make room for Christ…even though that is really the only reason for my Christmas.
I also know that the Christmas season is really just a microcosm of my life. I must consciously remove the busyness of daily life to make room for Him. I earnestly want there to be no day, no situation where I think or act like there is no room for Christ.
And I know, even that desire just shows my spiritual immaturity. How much I desire for my mind to be transformed…to grow to the place that Christ consumes enough of me that it’s an effort for me to make room for all the other stuff.
Will you make room for Christ this Christmas? In 2022?
It’s not a new song, but one I have embraced this Christmas season: Merry Christmas!
