There is something I enjoy very much.  It is when someone who has power, and every right to use it, and yet they hold back.  When a basketball player on a fast break jumps up with all his force toward the basket… and does a simple finger roll instead of a dunk.  When a band who can play the loudest hardest, music, sings a gentle ballad.  When a president serves turkey to a bunch of enlisted soldiers in a dangerous land.  When a king pardons a criminal who should die.  Power withheld can be more powerful than when it is expressed.

The day after Christmas we drove up to a shamba (farm) near a small town called Kasuku, Kenya.  It was the home of Pastor Stephen’s parents and now one of his brothers is living there.  They had killed 3 goats on Christmas day and slept 3 to a bed that night, but they killed another one for us that day.

We had a wonderful time talking and the boys played with all the kids there.  We took a soccer ball and a baseball.  They had a great time with the soccer ball, and we even hacked off a branch of a tree for a bat and tried to teach some young guys how to play baseball.  It really is a hard sport but they were determined.  Their base running was a bit suspect and the concept of actually having to touch each base was a bit hard to get through.  My Swahili still is not what it needs to be, and their English was no better.  Never the less, it was great fun.

We enjoyed eating as some of the goat and maize as it was cooked and then had a real full meal later, with mochimo, rice, chapati, and goat.  After eating, Regina, one of Stephen’s daughters, took Andrej over to the head of the goat, and asked if he was scared.  He said, “No, its not real, its already dead.”

We were sitting not far from the cows who were also enjoying a feast of maize stalks and shuckings out of a feeding trough, a manger.  I started thinking about sleeping there, 3 people to a bed.  We were supposed to be staying at Thompson Fall’s Lodge, just 20 minutes up the road with Stephen and his immediate family.  At that point, Stephen came over to tell me he had called the Lodge and talked to the manager.  They were full up, all the rooms were booked.  I started thinking about the feeding trough again.  Then he told me he was going to be going back to Nairobi with his family that night, and that he had somehow arranged with the Lodge manager a room for us to stay in.  I was very relieved to have a nice place for my family to stay, a bed for my wife, and one for each of my kids..  It was very nice to have a friend who knew the right people to talk to, and what to say.  Some one to pull some strings, cash in some chips.

Then I saw that feeding trough in a new light.  I know just a man, who helped me out.  The Creator of the Universe did not pull any strings, He did not cash in any favors for His own Son.  He sent Him as a simple baby, to no fanfare, to be born in a stable.  It would have been no trouble for God to have reserved a room, and yet He did not.  He was born in a stable.  I was worried about having flush toilets, and my savior rested in a feeding trough.

That is something I enjoy very much.  Although, it is a bit convicting as well.  Jesus came as a baby, grew as a boy, and lived as a man.   He was born in a stable, to a carpenter’s family, and He stayed that humble all His life.  God made flesh.  I wrote about Phillipians 2:5-8 before.  But now, going through our Christmas time, I know that He is my example.  And it only started with a manger, it ended with a cross.