Friday, December 19, 2014
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The short story writer, Bret Hart, gives us a story out of the Old West about a town called Roaring Camp. I think it's a story that brings the miracle of Christmas into very sharp focus into our lives today and I want to share it with you.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Baby and Roaring Camp."
Roaring Camp was probably the most lawless town in the Old West. It was a mining town and populated almost entirely, therefore, by miners. No sheriff, no marshal, very difficult to survive, so every man was sort of a law unto himself. It was like a 24-hour town, roaring and rocking and brawling and shooting all night long. There was murder. There was theft. There was assault, and they were never punished. It was just a wild place to live.
Now, very few women, of course, could survive in a place like that. There was a woman named Ole Sal who was sort of like everybody's woman, and Sal had a baby. And Sal died in childbirth. So the miners were left in this grimy old mining town with a baby to raise. They took the baby into one of the cabins and put it in a little crate and lined it with some oily clothes. And that's where they put the baby.
Very quickly they said, "You know, this isn't right. We can't keep him in this." So they sent one of the miners off to Sacramento, and he came back with this beautiful cradle. They put the baby in that. Suddenly somehow that oily cloth didn't look right in that beautiful rosewood cradle. So they sent another miner out to Sacramento, and he came back with some beautiful lace cloth and lined it with this elegant material.
Then they came into the cabin and looked around and said, "Look at this dirty floor. It never looked so bad before, but now with this beautiful cradle here it looks terrible." So they scrubbed the floor. Well, that created another problem. When the floor was clean, it showed how dirty the walls were and the roof.
So, all the miners pitched in, and pretty soon this cabin began to shine. A couple of others began to clean their cabin because they realized how dirty it was after they'd seen the cabin the baby was in. Then the baby had to sleep, so that meant there were quiet hours. Yes, in Roaring Camp! No one could believe it! There were nap times when you had to be quiet; night time when you had to be quiet. And all of a sudden Roaring Camp wasn't roaring so much any more.
As the baby began to grow, he needed a place to walk and to crawl. So, you know what? They took him down to the mine entrance each day. Now that's a dirty place. So guess what they did? They planted a garden at the entrance to the mine. In fact, word had it that they were starting to sell mirrors down at Sutter's Store; then some shirts and some shaving equipment, and even a suit or two. See, the baby had come to Roaring Camp, and the baby changed everything.
Two thousand years ago the world was a roaring camp. It was a place where baby girls were thought to be so valueless they were placed in jars and left on the street corner to die. It was a place where every other person in Rome was a slave, where babies were slaughtered, where murder was sport. But then the baby came and made all the difference.
You know, there's a roaring camp inside of all of us; and we still live in a Roaring Camp world. And in us is selfishness, and bitterness, anger, loneliness, scars, self-destructive instincts. But the baby comes and the baby can change everything; the baby who was born in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.
The promise of the Jesus who came that Christmas is our word for today from the Word of God in John 14:27, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. Not like the world gives. Do not let your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." This Jesus re-makes families, re-makes relationships, and rebuilds broken lives. You don't have to live in the madness of Roaring Camp any longer, because of the baby - the Savior, Christ the Lord.
If you want help in finding Him, would you go to our website ANewStory.com so this could be Day 1, Page 1 of your new story? Yes, the baby has come, and the baby will change everything.
Let Him change you this Christmas!