Once in royal David's city stood a lowly cattle shed

The ancient scriptures tell us the story of a census, a time for everyone to register with the government and enroll with the powers that ruled over them. A young carpenter took his wife to Bethlehem becausethat was the City of David, and the story tells us, that is where the Roman ruler required them to go so they could be taxed.

Bethlehem was known as the City of David because it was from there that Israel’s greatest king had come. Joseph the carpenter was of the lineage of David. And so, says scripture, was Mary his betrothed wife. She was with child.

When the time came for Mary to be delivered of her child, there was no room at the inn and the couple was consigned to a stable. The nineteenth century carol tells us how it all came about in the fullness of time:

Once in royal David’s city

stood a lowly cattle shed,

where a mother laid her baby

in a manger for his bed:

Mary was that mother mild;

Jesus Christ, her little child.

That scene came to mind when my wife and I toured the Palace of Versailles. It was just a month before the end of the Millennium, and we were visiting France for the first time together. Amid the seventeenth century splendor of Louis XIV, the Sun King’s great royal residence, we were amazed by the gold, marble, and crystal everywhere in lavish display. As we moved from ornate chamber to ornate chamber, we saw the portraits of France’s greatest kings and queens.

Those royal figures were draped in fur. Ermine, mink, fox, and beaver.

They wore fur robes. Their beds were covered in precious furs. These furs we soon realized were not just magnificent raiment. They were necessary.

Those chambers were cold. Frigid in late November, this Palace was the greatest thing that age had produced. The Sun King was the most powerful, the richest, as well as the most corrupt and corrupting of all the kings of the earth.

We shivered in our heavy coats, warm mufflers and gloves, our hats pulled down over our ears. Our expert French guides showed us every aspect of this regal chateau. We soon realized, however, that opulent as Versailles is, it was also a death trap. It was not at all unusual for royal newborns and infants to die there.

No wonder cannons boomed and peasants rejoiced at the news of a royal birth. And even greater was the joy when a royal child survived long enough to be baptized, confirmed, married, and crowned. The French may not have loved their monarchs, but they surely knew the hazards of internal disorder when no claimant came forward to provide relief from anarchy and bloody civil war.

I was reminded as well of my Uncle Bill in Connecticut. Uncle Bill was a dairy farmer. He never visited us. We always had to visit him. And I will always remember Uncle Bill taking me with him as he milked his dozens of cows. His was not a lowly cattle shed, but it was a full sized barn. Uncle Bill would strip off his coat and his shirt-even in mid-winter. That was because it was so warm in that barn. The cattle were lowing-and giving off heat.

The infant Jesus might have been born anywhere. His Father has cattle on a thousand hills. But His Father knew where to place this child who had to be born, in accordance with the scriptures, in Royal David’s City.

This child would survive and His birth would be the hinge of history. We now celebrate the coming of the One who would save us all from sin and error. And contrasting Versailles and my uncle’s dairy barn, I thank God that His ways are not our ways.

He came down to earth from heaven

who is God and Lord of all,

and his shelter was a stable,

and his cradle was a stall;

with the poor and meek and lowly,

lived on earth our Savior holy.