They say, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” I think this may be true. Think of a person’s favorite color…not everyone loves blue or red or purple. Some folks love orange or green even brown. Or consider flowers. Some love roses or orchids while others love the beauty of wild violets or daisies. But everyone is drawn to that they perceive as having beauty.

When our Abba God instructed Moses to construct the Tabernacle He gave exact instructions. The colors and materials chosen made the interior of the Tabernacle beautiful. And Eve in the garden saw that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was beautiful and its fruit good for eating. That human eye gravitates to beauty.

That first Christmas is so beautified by us today. The manger scenes and the angels and the shepherds…are all presented with a skewed perspective. It’s as if the actual circumstances are ignored. They are dirty and unpleasant. Not the way the we like to see the birth of Messiah.

Let’s face it, a stable is dirty, cold, and smelly. It isn’t the place anyone would want to give birth…maybe the cows and sheep…but not a human mama. Especially such a young mother who had never had a baby.

And those shepherds. They were the Levitical priests that were there for the birthing of the Passover lambs. When the angels showed up, well, they were dirty from their work. Birthing livestock is dirty work. There was no time to “clean up” before they went to find Messiah.

Personally, I love all things Christmas. Our Yeshua coming to live among us. The shepherds, the angels, the trip to Bethlehem..the whole story of Him coming to us…for me is beautiful. I’ve been thinking about the circumstances surrounding Yeshua’s birth and to the human eye they really aren’t pretty. Yet we present the Christmas story as lovely. Could it be that in our eyes, the eyes of those that love Yeshua, His arrival is not just miraculous but beautiful? To our beholder eyes all the difficulty and unpleasantness are completely over ridden by our great love of Him? Our eyes can only see the beauty of the grace our Abba YHWH extended to us?

This year as I look at all the beautiful ways we decorate and plan and prepare to celebrate our Yeshua, I’m gonna remind myself, at the time He came, the circumstances weren’t pretty. But because of Him, we behold those days as “beautiful”. What could be more beautiful than the grace and love Yeshua brought to us that night?

What to the human eye was dirty and unseemly for the birth of a king, became the most beautiful act of love toward humankind.