The Empty Cradle

I found this empty cradle mixed in with the boys Legos and blocks, likely uprooted and forgotten from the doll house nursery.  It's wooden frame couldn't be camouflaged against the brightly colored playthings.  It was noticeably out of place in that bin.  

We're merely days away from the start of the Advent season and this small, lonely cradle reminds me of the very way Jesus came to a world He didn't fit into.  A body He didn't fit into.  He stood out in every way yet humbled himself so completely He pressed His almighty power and vast, magnificent love into an infant babe.  Without Him our hearts remained like the unfilled cradle.  Barren. Vacant. Dead.
But He came!
For us.
All of us.
If we'll have Him.

I sink deeply this year into His coming.  More than years past.  I watch with heavy aching bones over the brokenness He came to heal.  A dear friend's young son succumbing to the cancer intruding his body - likely this Christmas will mark his last.  My heart is sorrowful over their pain.    
Marriages ending, family members feuding.   The brokenness is all around us.  Just as it was the night God sent His Son.  Born in a room fit for a beast, the savior of the world came to rescue our fractured bleeding  hearts.

Even now as I write my boys are yelling from the other room that their movie continues to interrupt with spotty internet service.  The symbol for broken internet connection is a cracked heart. 
"Mama, the heart's cracked..."  They yell.  "The heart's broken, Mama...." 
again and again, the heart's broken....  
The heart's broken...
The heart's broken....
It echoes in my mind.
The heart IS broken without Jesus.​

This year I see broken hearts and I feel my own sinful heart within me, cracked at the sight of the empty cradle.  
But.
We wait for Christmas Day to proclaim His coming - The birth.  The hope.  The humble beginning of everything.  EVERYTHING!  

The cradle did not stay empty as the tomb also did not remain void of life.

He is life.
He is here.
He is healing.
He is for us and in us.  

We are His and He desperately wants to intertwine our injured hearts around His.  This Christmas, don't leave the cradle of your heart abandoned, fill it with Jesus.

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