At our Christmas Eve candlelight service, we read Luke 2:7 and sang "Away in the Manger." Although I've been singing the song since I was a child, I still was not familiar with one translation of the scripture:
"And she bare her firstborn son, and wrapped him in `clothes, and laid him in a feed-trough..."(WYC from www.biblegateway.com)
I learned that the Greek word for manger, phatne, can mean either a stall for keeping animals or a feed trough for animals. (http://www.orlutheran.com/html/chrbirthfaq.html
I suppose I've always romanticized the Nativity scene. That night, tears came to my eyes as I imagined what Mary must have felt as she laid her baby down in a "feeding trough."
I find myself wanting to rationalize it by thinking that time/place were different then, and that maybe sleeping in a barn, wasn't so unusual. I even tapped into attachment parenting fervor and wondered, "how likely was it that she would even 'lay him down?' Aren't cribs a modern invention?"
I can still feel my heart breaking for the thought of any child laid in a feed trough. I simply can't accept that the certain joy of bringing the Savior into this world was enough to obscure the pain of the Mother that had no other place to lay her child.
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