Make Room for God

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

Luke 2:7

No room for Jesus? No room for the King of kings? No, but room for others and for other things. There was no room for Jesus in the world that He had made—imagine! It was true that first Christmas; and tragically, it’s true every day of the year.

Things have not really changed since that Bethlehem night two thousand years ago. God is still in the fringes of most of our lives. We fit Him in when it is convenient for us, but we become irritated when He makes demands on us. If God would only stay in His little box and come out when we pull the string.

Our lives are so full. There is so much to be done. Are we in danger in all of our busy activities of excluding from our hearts and lives the One who made us? Do we have time enough to begin each day by reading God’s Word and praying to the One who made us? Do we have time to make room for God in our prayers? Do we have time to ask God what He wants us to do?

“Oh, come to my heart, Lord Jesus; there is room in my heart for you.”

Our Father and our God, I always seem to have room for what I want. Forgive me for not always having room for You and Your Son. Please take up residence in my heart. Live in me, love through me, laugh with me. In the Savior’s name. Amen.

Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).