Leave The Pregnant Woman Outside?

They finished their travels just in time to begin their journey.

Water-breaking and searching for a place to stay, I find this one aspect of the Christmas story so...

sickening.

"they wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, for there was no room for them in the inn."

Really?  Who leaves the woman outside while she is in labor!?  Heartless?

Let's not say anything about this inn-owner that we don't know.  We don't know that he offered them to stay in a stable.  We don't even know there was a stable.  Just a manger--a trough.

Straw for sheep and salvation for sons of men.

Perhaps it wasn't that there was no room...perhaps it is that there was no room for them in the inn.

This was Joseph's ancestral home, surely he had family there.  Surely there was someone that could be called a relative, a friend.  Surely this small town would have had room somewhere.

But I bet word travels fast about unmarried pregnant women in small towns in the religious Jewish countryside.

Perhaps the calling of God for these two young people was more difficult than we think.  Maybe they were cut off from friend and family.  Outcasts for sins they did not commit.  Maybe there was room in the inn, just not for them.

I don't know.

All I do know is that God often reveals himself in strange and unexpected ways.  Far too often my heart is wide open, but I shut it fast in fear or judgement only to find that I left the Savior out in the cold.