Children Gathered at the Manger text

Children Gathered at the Manger

FRONT: "Children Gathered at the Manger" artwork by Ray Martens.

BACK: A Member of Congress told an audience about a kindergarten class preparing to act out the Christmas story for their parents.

The children practiced hard, and the teacher gave extra attention to the little boy who was to play the role of the innkeeper. He had Down Syndrome, and everyone helped him rehearse his two words over and over: "No room. No room."

When the day of the program arrived, the children were nervous and excited as they took their places on the stage. Some tripped on their costumes and others forgot their lines, but the play went on as planned until the part when Mary and Joseph knocked on the door of the inn.

Instead of hearing the words "no room" and having the door slammed in their faces, the little boy with Down Syndrome flung the door wide and said cheerily, "Come on in. I’ve been waiting for you."

Abortion has said to over forty million preborn children, "No room!" Most of them had the door of life slammed on them in the cause of self-centeredness and convenience. Millions of them died because of a lie that says they are less human and less valuable than are we who are already born.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all. Great evils usually begin with a lie." Hitler’s holocaust began with the lie that some people are not "pure" enough to live. Our own abortion holocaust began with the lie that preborn life is not human enough to be protected.

Christians are called to be great lovers. Lovers of life. Lovers of those in need. Lovers of children–born and preborn. Lovers of those who have told or accepted the lie and sinned. Lovers who reach out to those struggling with or snared by the lie of abortion. It is a lover who says: "Come on in. I’ve been waiting for you."