The Inn Crowd

I just got off of an overnight retreat at the church. One other adult and I led a small retreat for 6 teens that lasted just under 24 hours and during that time, we were learning about, praying with and growing in our love and devotion to our Mother Mary.

It was a beautiful time and such an amazing way to end this final week of Advent - watching teenagers, who people far to often write off as self-centered, unfocused, or immature, dive into personal prayer, reflection, journaling, and Adoration - especially when they could chosen to hang out with their friends, go Christmas shopping, or do a million other things that most of their peers would consider WAY cooler than hanging out with Jesus for a day!

The could have followed the example of the "in crowd" and blown off this retreat for other pursuits. But they didn't - they chose a different path. And it was beautiful.

In my own time of prayer during this retreat, I was drawn to reflect on the innkeeper who turned Mary and Joseph away at the door and sent them to the stable. It was a fleeting thought, a brief moment in a long period of silence in the Blessed Sacrament chapel, and to be honest, I had half forgotten about it until I was scrolling through my Facebook page tonight and saw a post that said something like, "Are you part of the inn crowd or one of the stable few?" And it brought that reflection from the chapel back to my mind.

Now, before I go on, I want to make something clear...I am not knocking the innkeeper here. I mean, there was a census called - Bethlehem was a busy place when Mary and Joseph arrived there. And there is only so much room in an inn. And he did offer them the shelter of the stable. I actually don't think he was a bad guy. But he does give us a great image to reflect on.

Because the fact remains - he did not have room for the Holy Family. He turned them away at the door and relegated them to a smelly, dirty stable for shelter, and ultimately, to give birth to their child, who, albeit unbeknown to him, was the Savior of the World.

That is what my mind was led to during that prayer - the simple fact that he did not have room for them. Sure, I can lay out a bunch of really great reasons why he didn't have room, and had no obligation to make room for them - but, still, at the end of the day, he did not have room for them.

How often do we not have room for the Holy Family in our lives? Are we like the innkeeper, who greets them at the door, but sends them away? Or maybe we aren't even opening the door to begin with.

Maybe we filled the "inns" of our hearts and lives with so much other stuff that we don't even hear them knocking anymore. But they are there - and He is with them.

I am really good at rationalizing why I do or don't do things - so good, in fact, that my dad's running joke is that I should have been a lawyer - so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that I can rationalize the heck out of the ups and downs of my personal prayer life and relationship with Christ. And I think that is what I was doing in the chapel when the innkeeper came into my mind - I was coming up with a great list of why it was ok that my prayer life had been a little lacking lately - that I was doing all these other things that "made up for it"....hmm, this is starting to sound familiar....

I didn't have room for them. Better said - I wasn't making room for them.

Because here is where we differ so strongly, and so importantly, from the innkeeper that night in Bethlehem. He had a fixed amount of space in which he could fit people. Our hearts do not.

We have an infinite capacity to love and to be loved by God. He created us so that no matter what life is throwing at us, no matter what we have filled our lives, our time, and even our hearts with - we always have room for His Family and for Him. If we choose to open the door and invite Him in.

Now, we may be really good at convincing ourselves that this is not true - that we simply cannot fit one more thing in our "busy" lives, even if that one thing is Jesus. But that's all we are doing - convincing ourselves. Because He made us for love, and love is boundless.

So as this Advent season draws to a close and we approach Christmas eve, remembering Mary and Joseph as they entered the city and sought shelter, maybe this is a good time to take an honest look at our own hearts and decide, when they come knocking, and they will, are we going to be part of the "inn crowd" and turn them away, or one of the "stable few" and invite them in?