It was His Father in heaven Who sent Him there
It was His mother on earth who laid Him there
And it was us who gave Him every reason to be there,
But it was Jesus alone
Who stretched out in that manger*
Not to be fed, but to be chewed to the bone.

This is a hard lesson indeed!
Not just the death of a single seed,
But true flesh and true blood displayed
Our only hope for salvation laid.

It was His Father in heaven Who sent Him there
It was His mother on earth who laid Him there
And it was us who gave Him every reason to be there,
But it was Jesus alone
Who stretched out in that manger
Not to be fed, but to be chewed to the bone.

Does this teaching so offend?
There's nothing in it to amend.
Only the torrent of truth in this flood:
You must eat My flesh and drink My blood!

It was His Father in heaven Who sent Him there
It was His mother on earth who laid Him there
And it was us who gave Him every reason to be there,
But it was Jesus alone
Who stretched out in that manger
Not to be fed, but to be chewed to the bone.

Do you now want to leave too?
Lord, Who else is there to follow but You?
You have the words of eternal life,
Not just flesh, but the spirit of the strife.

It was His Father in heaven Who sent Him there
It was His mother on earth who laid Him there
And it was us who gave Him every reason to be there,
But it was Jesus alone
Who stretched out in that manger
Not to be fed, but to be chewed to the bone.
 

*More than 2000 years ago, and maybe even still in some parts of the world, a manger was a place where food was put to feed livestock.  We would call it today a feeding trough, or bunk. The word manger comes from the French word "mangier," which means to eat, and the Latin word "manducare," which means to chew.  In Jesus' day, such a feeding place or container would have most likely been a hewn rock of some sort, with a small depression on top of it for placing food.  Our traditional image for it is a wooden crib-like structure.  Either way, for farm animals, whatever was laid out for them to eat, on rock or wood, or even on the ground, they chewed and chewed until it was good and gone--figuratively "chewed to the bone."
 

Luke 2: 1-19, John 6:35-69