Dear Innkeeper,

You didn’t even get a name. In the Bible, that is. Actually, there is only your implied presence at the doorway that night in Bethlehem. Still, in churches all over the world, someone always takes up your cause, dresses the part and delivers the single crucial line: There is no room at the inn. No respectable nativity pageant would be worth its salt (or myrrh) without an innkeeper. A bit part, but a necessary part nonetheless.

Actually, I’m a big fan of bit parts. Consider the world without those who play bit parts for most–if not all–of their lives. Behind every leading role–say a cancer researcher or a legislator or a New York Times best-selling author or a Savior–there has always been the presence of some nameless individual: a family member, a friend, a teacher, a mentor. These are bit part people at their truest and finest, those who inauspiciously go about the necessary work of guiding, redirecting, encouraging, criticizing, and loving, always loving.

Innkeeper, I know what you’re thinking: But I wasn’t a supporter or mentor or friend. I’m just a guy who opened the door and told a desperate young couple that there was no room for the night. Then–and this is the really sad part–I waved them off with a lousy consolation prize: shelter in a stable. I gestured toward my animal barn and closed the door on a woman in the throes of labor!

Honestly, there are also bit parts which are insignificant at best and harsh at worst. Cast into one of these parts, you guaranteed that Jesus would be born in the lowliest of places. This birth would turn the world on its head and usher in a kingdom with a wholly unexpected king: one born to common parents, one who would live, love, suffer and die among ordinary people, one who would conquer death, Immanuel, God with us always. And you were there at the very beginning to play the bit part we needed you to play.

So, when the curtain call comes, you should take your bow. Generations of fellow bit players are waiting offstage to give you a long and overdue ovation.

Humbly, from one bit player to another,

Shannon