Staff Photo by Ashlee Culverhouse/Chattanooga Times Free Press – June 22, 2012. David CookView other columns by David Cook
Besides the wise men, grungy shepherds and laboring Mary and Joseph, animals, too, were at the stable that night in Bethlehem.
Not only were animals there at the Nativity, but they were there first. The stable exists as a place for animals; it is their sanctuary, not ours. Mary and Joseph were visitors there, which means that of all the places God could have scripted for the backdrop for this Christ story – Mary just as easily could have delivered in a widow’s home, or riverbank, or cave, even – God not only chose a stable, but orchestrated a manger, a feed trough for animals, as the place for the Christ child to first lay his head.
Why?
Because animals are beloved, too.
Because the good news is theirs, too.