Bigger on the Inside, by Georgie Tennant

When we moved house, seven years ago this week, we had the luxury of removal men, paid for by my husband’s new company.  This was very fortunate as I’m not sure we would have ended up moving at all, if it had been down to me.  My husband had started his new job in the October, staying away all week and coming back at weekends.  I had just gone back to my part-time teaching job, caring simultaneously for a nine-month-old baby and a three-year-old boy.  I’m not sure packing would have ever got to the top of my to-do list.

I remember the moving day vividly.  I had taken the boys to nursery in the morning, returning to the house to oversee the boxes being packed and to try to pack some myself.  The day wore on and it looked like the job would never end.  The removal men commented that they feared the job had been under-scoped.  The house we lived in was a small, two bedroom property – but, unlike the new-builds of today, it had so much hidden storage.  A ridiculous amount.  Stair cupboards, under-stair cupboards, bedroom cupboards so deep and far-reaching you could almost get to Narnia if you climbed inside.  There was loft-space, garage-space, under-the-downstairs-sink space.  The poor removal men spotted, too late, the flaw in their ‘small job’: the house was bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside!

As I left, that night, to drive, with my children, to our new home, they were still emptying the garage by the light of the torches from their mobile phones.  I gave them a cheery wave and some heartfelt thanks, to disguise my guilt and embarrassment, hoping that the tea and cakes I’d lavished generously on them throughout the day, was enough to stop them from doubling the bill.

A few years on and living with much less clutter, I promise, we’ve had the joy of reading ‘The Chronicles of Narnia,’ with our boys.  As we neared the end of the final book, ‘The Last Battle,’ one particular section caught my imagination.  The characters are gathered around a stable, where some strange events have taken place and they are trying to work out what is going on and why.  They come to the realisation that the stable is somehow bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.  With his signature ability to weave Christian parallels into his fiction, C.S. Lewis writes, ‘”Yes,” said Queen Lucy.  “In our world, too, a stable once held something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.”’

What a profound thought to take with us as we journey further into this festive season – “In our world…a stable once held something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.”  What a thought to ponder and a truth to dwell on, whilst everything else in this chaotic season is clamouring for our attention.  It is one I am going to try to ponder daily.   I love, too, the words of the song ‘Mary, Did You Know,’ which addresses Mary, asking her if she had any inkling at all of the enormity of the story she had found herself a part of.  You can read the full lyrics here, but I love the end: ‘Did you know that your baby boy, is heaven’s perfect lamb?  That the sleeping child you’re holding, is the Great I Am?’

I love school and church nativities as much as anyone else, marvelling at the jostling sheep and the mishandling of the baby-doll Jesus by his disgruntled, six-year-old parents.  But let’s not play down the enormity and gravity of this story, let’s not lose the wonder.  Let’s make sure we read inspiring words and write them, listen to inspiring songs and sing them, reminding ourselves that, however it looks, however we portray it from the outside, the Christmas story is so much bigger and so much further-reaching on the inside, than it can sometimes seem in our chaotic, modern world.

Georgina Tennant is a secondary school English teacher in a Norfolk Comprehensive.  She is married, with two sons, aged 10 and 7 who keep her exceptionally busy. She writes for the ACW ‘Christian Writer’ magazine occasionally, and is a contributor to the ACW-Published ‘New Life: Reflections for Lent,’ and ‘Merry Christmas, Everyone: A festive feast of stories, poems and reflections.’ She writes the ‘Thought for the Week’ for the local newspaper from time to time and also muses about life and loss on her blog: www.somepoemsbygeorgie.blogspot.co.uk