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Walking with the lowly on the Christmas journey

Lynne Baab • Tuesday December 23 2025

Walking with the lowly on the Christmas journey

At our beloved church, we have an open prayer time. The ushers hand around microphones, so that everyone can hear the prayers. Each week, between five and ten people pray out loud. I always have something to pray for! I limit myself to once every two weeks.

On Sunday December 14th, I prayed aloud:

“Lord, some of us no longer have someone we love on this earth, and we will miss them this Christmas. Comfort us when we grieve. Some of us have people on this earth who we don’t really want to be with. Give us love and patience with them. I also pray for those whose Christmas plans are not what they dreamed of.”

The lowly are always welcome at the manger. I’m proposing a broad definition of lowly. I want to include all of us who grieve the absence of someone we love, all who grieve our inability to love wisely and well, and all whose Christmas plans are not what we hoped for.

Our granddaughter is now 11 and too busy with her friends to help us set up our Christmas decorations. I miss that. We have three manger scenes from different places in the world. From age 3 to 9, our granddaughter loved to help us set them up. She had a plan. She put Jesus in the middle with the animals as close to him as she could get them, often leaning onto the manger. Mary and Joseph were pretty close, and the shepherds and wise men were the furthest from Jesus.

The first time she did that, my immediate thought was to correct her and put the animals with the shepherds on the edges. I’m so glad I didn’t say anything to her. I came to love seeing those three mangers with the animals leaning on them. She seemed to get something Reginald Heber understood. Anglican Bishop Heber (1783-1826) wrote 57 hymns, most of them still in use today, including “Holy, Holy, Holy.” The animals leaning on the manger remind me of Heber’s Epiphany hymn, “Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning,” also known as “Star of the East.” Here’s the second verse:

Cold on His cradle the dewdrops are shining;
Low lies His head with the beasts of the stall;
Angels adore Him in slumber reclining,
Maker and Monarch and Savior of all!

Jesus lowers himself to come to earth. In the manger, low lies his head with the beasts of the stall. And the angels adore him because he remains the Maker and Monarch and Savior of all.

I have continued to arrange one or two of our manger scenes like our granddaughter did, with the animals as close to Jesus as I can put them. That arrangement emphasizes Jesus’s welcome of the lowly and his love of the animals he created. It also visually represents the truth that Jesus came to redeem and renew all creation.

Christian poet Luci Shaw died recently at 96. She wrote many poems about the incarnation. I want to give you her light-hearted poem, “The Groundhog.” I’m thinking of all of us grieving losses this Christmas, for those of us who feel broken or incomplete, who identify with the lowly beasts and long for Jesus’s full redemption and restoration. A smile can help us remember Jesus’s presence, guidance, peace, and joy on the journey.

The Groundhog by Luci Shaw

The groundhog is, at best, a simple soul
    without pretension, happy in his hole,
twinkle-eyed, shy, earthy, coarse-coated gray,
     no use at all (except on Groundhog Day).
At Christmas time, a rather doubtful fable
    gives the beast standing room inside the stable
with other simple things, shepherds, and sheep,
    cows, and small winter birds, and on the heap
of warm, sun-sweetened hay, the simplest thing
    of all—a Baby. Can a groundhog sing,
or only grunt his wonder? Could he know
    this new-born Child had planned him, long ago,
for groundhog-hood? Whether true tale or fable,
    I like to think that he was in the stable,
part of the Plan, and that He who designed
    all simple wonderers, may have had me in mind. [1]

Baby Jesus, Maker and Monarch and Ruler of all, we want to be simple wonderers in the stable. Help us join the animals and lean with them on your manger. We also want to join the angels in adoring you as you slumber. We need you in so many ways. In this broken, sad, and lonely world, full of losses and grief, help us draw near to you.

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Illustration by Dave Baab. Next week: Witnesses on the journey.

Previous posts that include poetry by Luci Shaw:

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[1] from Luci Shaw, The Secret Trees.



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