Away In A Coffin

Turned away from the hospital on a cold winter night the poor couple left trying to find a warm place for the birth of their first child. The blizzard’s wind whipped the cold dry snow around them as they huddled together to try and keep enough warmth until they could find a place. The time came as he broke a window to open a door to get his wife inside out of the cold. Inside the warmth of love overpowered the cold outside as his first son came into the world. Looking for a blanket to wrap the child in, he grabbed a new shroud from the funeral home that he had just broken into. Then, he laid the child wrapped in the warm linens into a small casket that they used as a bed. Before you think this story strange, wasn’t the miraculous birth of our Savior surrounded by the elements of His death?

Luke records that Mary “Wrapped [Jesus] in swaddling clothes” (Luke 2:7). The picture that immediately comes to our minds is one of a little baby boy wrapped up all nice and snug in a nice warm blue blanket. Yet, the swaddling clothes that warmed our Savior in His first minutes of incarnation were something different. The swaddling clothes that warmed our savior were the chilling linens of a death shroud. They were the same type of linens that would again be wrapped around his lifeless body just after the crucifixion.

Luke goes on to record that Mary “Laid Him in a manger” (Luke 2:7). We are so found of the images that capture our thoughts this time of year of the baby Jesus laying in a little wooden manger. Yet, the manger that the Christ child was laid in was far different than what we have grown accustomed to seeing in yards every December. The manger, or feeding trough, that held the baby Jesus was made of stone. The Christ Child’s manger would have been a feeding trough hewn from the stone sides of a cave. On His first day of life He was laid in a stone manger; on the last day of his life he was laid in a stone tomb.

Matthew told us that the child Jesus was given gifts: And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshiped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh (Matthew 2:11). Myrrh is only mentioned three times in the New Testament. Myrrh is an aromatic gum produced from a thorn-bush that grew in Arabia and Ethiopia, and was obtained from a tree in the same manner as frankincense. This thorny tree, called "balsamodendron myrrha", is similar to the acacia. It grows from eight to ten feet high, and is thorny. When it oozes from the wounded shrub, myrrh is a pale yellow color at first, but as it hardens, it changes to dark red or even black color. It is fitting that the Baby Jesus, our High Priest and the King of Kings was given Myrrh. As the smell of frankincense represented sweetness, myrrh represented bitterness. Aside from the birth of the Savior, myrrh is only mentioned two other times in the New Testament: each time it is at the death of Christ. The chief use of myrrh was one of embalming. John 19:39, “And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.”

Each December Christians gather to celebrate the joyous birth of their Savior. Through all their glad tidings that fail to see that His birth was a prefiguring of His death. For without the manger their would have been no cross. And, the Cross is the greatest of gifts.


Until Next Time May The Good Lord Bless And Keep You: All Y'all!


Bobby

Bobby Cohoon
North Carolina, USA
cohoon@embarqmail.com