shipwrecked at the stable

I've been reading "Reflections for Ragamuffins" (Brennan Manning) as my evening devotion this year, and it has been great! From last night's reading...

The shipwrecked at the stable are the poor in spirit who feel lost in the cosmos, adrift on an open sea, clinging with a life-and-death grip to one solitary plank. Finally they are washed ashore and make their way to the stable, stripped of the old spirit of possessiveness in regard to anything. The shipwrecked find it not only tacky, but utterly absurd to be caught up either in tinsel trees or in religious experiences— “Doesn’t going to church on Christmas make you feel good?” They are not concerned with their own emotional security or with any of the trinkets of creation. They have been saved, rescued, delivered from the waters of death, set free for a new shot at life. At the stable in a blinding moment of truth, they make the stunning discovery that Jesus is the plank of salvation they have been clinging to without knowing it!

All the time they were battered by wind and rain, buffeted by raging seas, they were being held even when they didn’t know who was holding them. Their exposure to spiritual, emotional, and physical deprivation has weaned them from themselves and made them reexamine all they once thought important. The shipwrecked come to the stable seeking not to possess, but to be possessed, wanting not peace or a religious high, but Jesus Christ.

To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in

Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all

those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord

Jesus Christ —their Lord and ours.

1 Corinthians 1:2