Really? Borrow my cave? What's this got to do with #adventwonder?
Everything!
Jesus was born in a cave on the edge of Bethlehem. No great surprise there - the farming folk and the livestock owners used the caves to store all sorts of things, including the life stock etc yes it was a stable - but it was a stable created from nature. And it was borrowed, or probably freely given out of desperation, by an innkeeper (possibly also a family member - don't forget that Joseph had to go to his ancestral town of origin) who didn't want the highly expectant and about to deliver Mary making his own dwelling ritually unclean by giving birth there - he had no rooms anyway! Add to that the fact that the cave would have been one of the cleanest places to take the fragile Mary to give birth because it was regularly cleaned and swept (not sure whether they used disinfectant) because the animals that normally inhabited the space were a precious commodity. You look at any farm today when the animals are out of the barn or the stables they get really cleaned!
The cave, borrowed, was the obvious place - the best place - for Jesus to be born.
Humble, utilitarian, unadorned.
And how does the world celebrate this ?
I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions (but I #adventwonder if we will ever really understand Christ's coming without equally remembering that he left earthly life in the same way: wrapped in cloths in a borrowed cave...)
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