Merry Christmas from Abba Adoption, a Christian Adoption Agency!

History tells us that one of the most beautiful and beloved Christmas carols, “Silent Night” was written in 1818 by Josef Mohr, assistant pastor of a church in a village near Salzburg, Austria, bordering the Alps mountain range. Mohr was inspired but the breathtaking night-time view of his peaceful village to put music to his poem about the night when angels announced the birth of the Messiah.

In the most up-to-date translation of the New International Version of the Bible, Luke 2:7 says:

“and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped Him in cloths and laid Him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them”

Chances are, when you were a kid, you imagined Christmas night going down kind of like this:

Mary and Joseph seeing a “NO VACANCY” sign at the local hotel, maybe checking with the innkeeper who would slam the door in the faces of the nervous parents-to-be. Skip to Mary delivering God incarnate, like the song painted…”all is calm,” in a spacious barn.

As it turns out, the Greek word that was roughly translated as “inn,” or “kataluma” actually means “lodging place, guest room, or upper room.”Kataluma is used in Mark 14:14 as “upper room,” where Jesus celebrated Passover with the disciples.

When we aren’t running our Christian adoption agency, we love to do word study to better understand God’s Holy Word!

Because Bethlehem was so tiny, with a population of a few hundred people, there were no inns. It was customary to stay with relatives, and since the census was being held, Joseph’s family would have been expecting him.

When they saw Joseph with a very pregnant Mary, they conveniently couldn’t squeeze them in their guest quarters. His own family turned them away to the stable room, making their delivery room within earshot of the family gathering where they were most likely female family members who could have aided in the birth of Jesus.

While the night Christ was born was peaceful at the location the angels told shepherds of the Holy birth, that night was far from calm of silent for Mary and Joseph. Piercing labor pains, yelling from Mary, screaming from a slimy newborn…you get the idea.

Instead of a skilled midwife, Mary got her rough-handed, carpenter husband. Instead of a warm bunch of relatives with joyful anticipation, Mary got the cold shoulder.

Christmas night may have ended with the joy of the world’s most perfect Gift, but it was ushered in with the pain of rejection and childbirth. It’s so poetic that the birth of the Son of God went down in one of the most humble settings to match the humility that was displayed by making Jesus a helpless baby. The King of kings entered the world just like He left it: rejected.

As a Christian adoption agency, we come across many ladies who are feeling rejected because of their circumstances. We encourage all birth mothers to continue reading to see how God knows their pain.

It was not by circumstance that there wasn’t room for Jesus. The God who parted the Red Sea could have easily provided the grandest of palaces for the birth of His Son, but He didn’t.

Even if there had been a vacancy, God most likely wouldn’t have accepted it.

Through the birth of Jesus, God wanted to show how closed off and unwelcoming our hearts are to His love. The message of Christmas is that God, in all of His power, made Himself the most vulnerable, messy, and needy version of humans — a newborn. Christmas is the time to celebrate that God made Himself within the limits of humanity so that He could take this broken world and stitch it, and us, back together.

Know that by working with Abba Adoption, a Christian adoption agency, we’ll do our absolute best to point you to the healing love of Jesus Christ!

This Christmas season, dwell on the fact that even in Jesus’ first day as a human, He related to our pain, just like He did for the remainder of His life on earth.

For many people, Christmas is not joyful; it’s only a reminder of hurt. Have you been turned away by loved ones? Have you been burned by the Church? Are you hurting because of bad choices you’ve made? Do you carry pain that can’t be soothed by anything in this world?

On Christmas and every day, God relates to your pain. He is the light of the world and He hurts for you and with you. What better reason sit there to have joy in your heart than this?