It looked more like a condemned construction site attacked by hungry genetically altered velociraptors. The globs of thick cream colored icing oozed out of the cracks of the lopsided dark brown walls made out of thick cuts of gingerbread. Adorning the roof line were sugared gum drops, half eaten candy canes and the remnants of chocolate chips that never made it to the “construction site”. Each year my mom invites all the grand-kids to her home where they simultaneously wear out their pancreas and grammy’s carpet. It’s a Christmas tradition they all treasure. I have no idea where the gingerbread house came from… but I would argue that it could be a great reminder of God’s promise. Before you click off this or attempt to scroll to the point let me explain…
God chose a young girl named Mary from Nazareth to carry the Savior to birth. The problem was a census required she and her husband-to-be to travel 70 to 80 miles to Bethlehem to be counted because they came from the family line of David who was the King that God himself chose for Israel about a thousand years before Jesus birth. David was from Bethlehem. This was a small town known for their sheep. Later on, Bethlehem would be the place to go to get lamb for the sacrifices in God’s Temple.
As the story goes they arrived just as Mary was to give birth. So they ended up in a place where the animals go to be held which became her delivery room. And a miracle happened. That night, in the city of David, in Bethlehem, the Savior of the world was born!
This is not where the miracle ends… hundreds of years before Jesus birth, there was a promise made: from King David’s family, the Messiah that would save God’s people would be born. Not only did Jesus share the royal family line of King David, but they were born in the same town!
30 or so years after Jesus was born, He performed a miracle. He fed a crowd of 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and two fish. The next day the crowds returned and Jesus said to them, “…’I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry…’” John 6:35. Without “bread” we would die. Jesus is the one who sustains us with his provision!
Imagine that you are reading this passage as a Jewish person from a two thousand or so years ago. Imagine how you would feel when you learned that Jesus was born in Bethlehem! Imagine the amazement… the feeling that you get when you discover a huge mystery! The hair that stands on end, the feeling to run and tell someone right away! But why don’t most of us have this feeling or reaction when we learned it? Because a lot of us don’t know that Bethlehem is translated from Hebrew to mean: “House of Bread”. So the Bread of Life was born in the House of Bread! The House of Bread provided the Savior and the Sacrifice! What a miracle!
So maybe when we see a gingerbread house, we would think about how God’s promise was fulfilled by having the Savior of the world, the Bread of Life to be born in a House of Bread… so we will never go hungry again.