Our barns …

Our barns…

The older I am, , the more I remember the times when I was and lived in my family home. It is known that long-term memory is slowly beginning to come to the fore. On the occasion of Christmas, I was thinking at night, when I could not sleep today over the essence of the barn, the place that we so neatly call the stable, which we associate with the birth of Jesus. We like to see these stables, it has even become a tradition that these stables are created wherever they go. So clean, smelling of hay, lit up with colorful lights. Children keep in cheese a picture in which all this has an artistic intention and a message, not necessarily real and tangible. Although I have heard about real stables stylized as the one in Bethlehem.

As I have often written, I grew up in a peasant-working-class family, there was a barn next to our house, usually one horse in it, two cows, two – three pigs, sometimes a calf, next to it there was a henhouse, in the same barn where chickens lived, and ducks from spring to autumn. There was also a rooster and chicks in the spring. All this meant that these maybe eighty square meters were teeming with life. In summer, of course, the company, apart from the pigs, roamed the yard, was in the meadow or worked in the field when the horse was working. Winter, on the other hand, in an insulated stable, the company was sitting inside.

For people ignorant, I must admit that the stable did not smell like perfume, but there was a peculiar smell of a mixed smell of hay, straw, food and animal excrement. The barn had to be cared for and cleaned at least once a day so that the animals were not dirty and there was no odor. It was the pigs that stained the most. Every day, too, I also had to throw out the manure and clean the animals, and the best thing about it was when they ‘littered’ with fresh straw, as they liked it. The pigs were even hiding in this straw and only their mouths stuck out.

This view, , made us quickly forget about the hardships of cleaning up in order to enjoy the fact that the animals are clean and tidy. The horse was cleaned with special brushes, our “Baśka” was brown with a black mane and tail. The cows also had their names, like the rest of the flock. Worse with chickens, because their lives were shorter and there were a lot of them. The hens did not clean the hen house that often, they did not get dirty. However, every morning and evening we checked if there were any eggs. They had special places to go into to lay the egg there, and they boasted loudly once they had laid the egg. Of course, the company and us were watched by a dog that alarmed when someone entered our property. I remember one very well: when he passed away, he was eighteen, as old as me, we lived together, although my life is still going on.

So about animals and the stable had to be looked after, we painted it every year with lime, in the attic there was straw and hay for the horse and cows. I remember when it was Christmas Eve, my father had such red wafers for animals and we would go to them and put them in the troughs, and we gave the horse hand to mouth. It was a ritual so that the animals would serve us well, the horse was hard-working, and the cows gave a lot of milk. However, it also happened that, for various reasons, this stable did not look good, because someone fell ill, because there was a lot of other work and the animals were not so well-kept and sometimes they were dirty, because they did not care where they were lying, except for the horse that slept on the standing.

For a long time I have been wondering why Jesus was born in a stable? We know from the biblical description that there was no room for Mary and Joseph, because the census was because there were crowds of people. Nobody cared about the pregnant woman, and maybe even less so nobody wanted to be in trouble. We know well, however, that without God’s will nothing could have happened, especially in relation to his Son. So Jesus was to be born in a stable. When I think about our stable, I imagine Christmas, winter, frost and snow and all the animals in the stable, because it’s cold. It was not so there, we do not even know if there were animals in this cave at all, the Bible tells us nothing about it.

In our stable used to be empty when it was summer, when all the company was on green pastures. There weren’t pigs, but the Israelites didn’t raise pigs because they were unclean animals. So, it was probably a stable that was used for sheep and goats that were used to pasture at night. There are also no winters in Israel like we used to have, so there was definitely no snow or frost. Anyway, it was probably not the cleanest place, perhaps Joseph had cleaned it up quickly so that his wife could give birth in a little tidy place. Probably, such behavior was familiar to the inhabitants of Bethlehem, as no one was particularly surprised about it.

For us, living in the world of hospitals, maternity wards, women whose pregnancies are monitored from the beginning to the very birth are not unthinkable. Probably our women would not be able to imagine that they would give birth to their child in the stable. Perhaps among animals and their smells. Our life is becoming more and more sterile and even the stable I describe today is for many people one great abstraction. Today there are specialized breeding of various animals, far from people, so that sometimes someone does not see how animals are handled today. That is why we are a bit artificial, recently we laughed at the children that they do not know where the milk is from, probably many of them do not know where the nugets or eggs are from, where the delicious Mc Donald meatballs in buns come from. We don’t even ask about it and we probably even forget about it, because it’s not tasty.

Lord God gave us animals like vegetation to eat Fr. Gen. 9 – 2 All beasts on earth and all birds of the air, fear you and anxious. Everything that moves on the ground and all the fish of the sea are placed in your possession. 3 Everything that moves and lives is intended for you to eat, as green plants, I give you everything. And there is no need to flinch at this, but we must remember that our body needs it all. Thus, we can define a stable or a cowshed as a place of shelter for animals that were kept by humans for, for example, wool, milk or meat. God has entrusted and given, man takes care of.

So our stable Bethlehem’s stables show something more that these places were an expression of concern for what God entrusted to man, an expression of taking responsibility for creation and the need to protect them from carnivores. I can’t imagine what it could be like, if one day our animals had to be outside in winter, it would be terrible, they were also cold. Probably not that much, because they had their furs and hooves, but they had to have shelter.

Stable or cowshed is an image of our heart. It is in our heart that there may be dirt and stench, we can breed the animal nature of a gentle horse or mad bull. Because it is from the heart of a person that life flows, as well as all bad things. The Bible teaches us to guard our heart carefully, because there is life in it. Young people talk about the heart being stolen by a loved one or loved one. We know what madness people in love are ready for. It is our heart that can be the seat of demons and all evil, our heart can err and be deceived. The scent wafting from our heart is not often pleasant and soothing, but rather it comes out with an odor. There are wounded hearts that sink into hatred first for the wounded and then for most people. Our hearts need someone to take care of them. Someone who can clean them, bring life to the smell of hay and cleanliness.

The stable – our heart needs Christ the Lord to be born in her, He did not hesitate to come and be born there to show us that the stable of our hearts is not abhorred. He came to those whose hearts are crushed and broken – Ps. 51, 19 The Lord’s sacrifices are a contrite spirit; a broken and broken heart, God, you will not despise. Just when our stable is full of uncleanness, and we are helpless, we can do nothing more, and the animals roar with hunger and dirt, the Lord wants to come, the Lord wants to be born in our heart. We need him extremely badly. Without him, there is no point in taking care of the stable, but with him we will leave it quickly.

Many people think that he must first clean his stable to invite Jesus, believe me not we can, we can whiten it, we can give fresh straw or hay, but underneath there is a whole pile of old manure that no one can clean up. I have seen cowsheds where animals stood even more than a meter above the floor on a heap of manure, because no one wanted to work. Believe me, Jesus is able to cleanse all the dirt from your heart. He is very anxious to do this. We get tired and struggle, we would like our strength, but it is impossible. Only He can set us free from ourselves. Only He can transfer us to the Kingdom of God, no one else.

Beloved, I wish you for this Christmas, today, on Christmas Eve 2015, that you would not be ashamed and not be afraid to open your heart door – a stable for Christ because he wants to start a new life in you, a life full of hope and victory over himself. Living in the presence of God who loves our barns.

Yours in Mr. Kazik J.

Number of views:
59