Why a Stable?

“She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” – Luke 2:7 (NIV)

When God chose to have his son born somewhere other than the inn have you ever wondered why He chose a stable instead of somewhere else? Why not a store or a carpenter’s shop? Maybe He could have been born in a private house or in a tent on the hillside among the shepherds. Instead of any of those places He was born in a stable.

Today we have a way of romancing the place of Jesus’ birth. We build crèches in our yards to hold the holy family. We have a trough with some hay and the baby lying in the hay. But the stable that Jesus was born in was just a barn. Cows, donkeys, sheep, horses, and chickens all lived in the barn. Barns are not very romantic. They smell of animal dung and usually they are very dirty. I imagine that it took Joseph time to clean a space for his wife to lie down to have the baby and then he cleaned out the manger so that she could place the baby in a makeshift bed. There was nothing romantic about the stable. If we visited the stable we would be careful where we stepped. We would be careful about breathing the foul air and we would not stay longer than we had to.

So why was He born in a stable? Why was His first bed a manger? Why were His first companions the farm animals?

First it showed the humble way that our God chose to enter the human race. He came as one of us. No one would accuse Him of taking advantage of His position. No one would say that they would trade birth places with Him. He came as a lowly human; the poorest of the poor.

Second His birth was unnoticed by others. No one expected a baby to be born in a barn. Calves and colts are born in barns but not babies. He came into the world and no one even suspected that the King and Creator of the universe was lying in a manger in a barn in Bethlehem.

But it also shows how His birth fulfilled prophecy. John tells us in his gospel that He came unto His own but His own didn’t receive Him. Isaiah tells us there was nothing beautiful about His birth and if we had seen Him we would have despised Him. He was just another poor baby born to poor parents. Probably He would remain a peasant like His parents. Why should anyone care about another peasant baby born into this world?

That stable was more than a barn. That stable was the birth place of a King. That stable was a birth place of the Saviour. God can take the humblest of places and make it a royal place when He comes to stay. The stable was just a stable until Jesus made it His birth place.