In 1868 Bret Harte wrote the short story, The Luck of Roaring Camp. Roaring camp was a gold prospecting camp in California and had the reputation of being the meanest, toughest mining town in all of the West. There were murders, thefts – a terrible place inhabited entirely by men, and one woman Chimokee Sal who tried to serve them all and died while giving birth to a baby boy.
The men took the baby, and believing the child to be a good luck charm, decided to name the boy Thomas Luck. At first, the miners put the baby in a box of old rags. They decided it didn’t look right, so they sent one of the men to town some eighty miles away to buy a rosewood cradle. He brought it back, and they put the rags and the baby in the rosewood cradle. Now the rags didn’t look right. So they sent another man to Sacramento, and he came back with some beautiful silk and lace blankets. They put the baby, wrapped in the blankets, in the rosewood cradle. The beautiful cradle in the room made the men notice the filthy floor. So these hardened men got down on their hands and knees to scrub the floor until it was clean. Of course what that did was make the filthy walls, ceiling, and windows without curtains look absolutely terrible. So they washed down the walls, ceiling, windows and hung curtains. Once they saw things beginning to look as they thought they should look, they next had to change their behavior. Because the baby slept a lot, they had to give up a lot of their fighting and carousing for the sake of the baby.
The whole temperature of Roaring Camp seemed to go down. The miners would take Thomas and set him by the entrance to the mine in his rosewood cradle so they could see him when they came up with their loads of dirt. Somebody took it on himself to plant flowers and made a very nice garden at the mine entrance. The miners would bring the baby boy shiny little stones and things that they would find in the mine. To be more presentable and clean for the child, soon the general store was all sold out of soap and shaving gear and perfume and those kinds.
The bottom line of Bret Harte’s story? The baby changed everything.
That’s what Christmas does. When Jesus entered our world on that Christmas day long ago — He changed everything.
Coming as a baby, God for the first time allowed us to come near Him and know Him as never before. Accepting Jesus as our Savior — just as the men in the story with baby Thomas Luck — the Baby Jesus slips into every crevice of our experience and changes everything. The Bible says that when Jesus enters our lives we become,
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
(2 Corinthians 5:17)
The baby changes everything!
“He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” (Revelation 21:5)
Pastor Mark
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