We’ve had a Nativity scene at Christmas since our children were toddlers. We made sure we chose figures that they could handle without the fear of breaking anything. The stories they acted out with the characters were more than a little imaginative and included details and dialogue not found in Luke or Matthew (including shepherds and wise men rappelling down the furniture on their epic quest to find the Christ child).

Today we focus on the cow in the nativity scene. There is no actual cow in Luke, although it is a creature that may well have eaten from a manger. Instead our passage is from Isaiah where the prophet describes the future glory of Israel and the reconciliation of God with his people in a time when peace will reign (the lion will eat straw like the ox).

I have some first-hand knowledge of cows; I grew up on a dairy farm in Iowa and worked with cattle for most of my youth. Cows, and particularly dairy cows, are creatures of routine; they know when you will be coming to feed them each day, or gather them from the pasture for milking. If you try to sleep for an extra hour in the morning, there is a din of discontented moos for being lax about their schedule. If there was a cow present at Jesus’ birth, it would likely have been displeased at sharing its home with Mary and Joseph, irked that something besides hay was lying in its feed bunk, and annoyed at all the commotion of shepherds arriving to verify the story of the angels. These were clearly not part of the everyday, or in this case every-night, routine.

In hindsight we realize that Jesus’ arrival in Bethlehem was the start of God’s ultimate fulfillment of reconciling us to himself, and that through Christ the glory of Israel has spread to all who believe in him. It was not the normal routine. The events of that night may have annoyed the cow, but they are our greatest cause for celebration. God did not abandon us to the status quo of our sinful state, but instead intervened to set things right. “Glory to God in the highest!”