No Room In the Inn
The busiest days of the entire year are these just before Christmas when we rush from one thing to another trying to accomplish all that must be done—and we hate being interrupted whenever we’re in a hurry to complete a task. Woe to the saboteur of someone’s schedule! Regardless who she or he is, they easily can become a victim of a blistering outburst of angry annoyance.
When we have no room for anything more, unexpected demands made on our time are greatly resented. Our clocks lack emergency switches able to expand our ever-shrinking time with an additional thirty to forty-five minutes with which to react to some petition. Therefore, some have posted on the doors to their offices—or their hearts—an invisible sign that is their version of the answer to that famous request in the gospel Christmas story, “No room in the Inn-tricately crowded agenda of my day.”
So wise men and women—not on camels, but on tight schedules—must always be able to create room for the unexpected time beggars. They do so because of the wise advice given to the Greeks in the Odyssey: “All strangers and beggars are from Zeus, and a gift, though small, is precious!” And early Christians were likewise advised in the letter to the Hebrews: “Do not neglect being hospitable, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.”
Christmastide is renowned for telling stories, so I ask the pardon of old friends as I retell one of my favorites: Once a man died and awoke to find himself seated alone in what appeared to be a waiting room. Leaning his head against the wall he could faintly hear voices on the other side he presumed were a committee or jury since they were deciding his ultimate fate. He heard them speaking of his good deeds, his charity to the poor and devotion to prayer. But just as they seemed about to announce his reward, louder voices objected, “True, true; he did do some good in his life. Yet every time that we came to visit him he always became greatly agitated, referring to our visitations as interruptions!”
When we have no room for anything more, unexpected demands made on our time are greatly resented. Our clocks lack emergency switches able to expand our ever-shrinking time with an additional thirty to forty-five minutes with which to react to some petition. Therefore, some have posted on the doors to their offices—or their hearts—an invisible sign that is their version of the answer to that famous request in the gospel Christmas story, “No room in the Inn-tricately crowded agenda of my day.”
So wise men and women—not on camels, but on tight schedules—must always be able to create room for the unexpected time beggars. They do so because of the wise advice given to the Greeks in the Odyssey: “All strangers and beggars are from Zeus, and a gift, though small, is precious!” And early Christians were likewise advised in the letter to the Hebrews: “Do not neglect being hospitable, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.”
Christmastide is renowned for telling stories, so I ask the pardon of old friends as I retell one of my favorites: Once a man died and awoke to find himself seated alone in what appeared to be a waiting room. Leaning his head against the wall he could faintly hear voices on the other side he presumed were a committee or jury since they were deciding his ultimate fate. He heard them speaking of his good deeds, his charity to the poor and devotion to prayer. But just as they seemed about to announce his reward, louder voices objected, “True, true; he did do some good in his life. Yet every time that we came to visit him he always became greatly agitated, referring to our visitations as interruptions!”
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