Christmas Wrap Part 2

This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Luke 2:12

So last time we contemplated the lowliness of the birth of Christ and the struggles of Mary and ourselves during the holiday season. Today we consider far happier things. Like the finding of the Savior. And the sign was a baby wrapped in cloth! Now there is a sign for you. There were babies all over Bethlehem, one would assume. The Savior, however, would be wrapped like a peasant child and sleeping in a feed trough. Here is one shiny angel, a whole angel choir, lots of glory and fear announcing the Christ Lord, and they were to look for something unusual, yes, but far from glorious in its appearance. And this is how God works. Things hit us as glorious, like when we realize who God is and that He wants to save us and we accept that, and then life looks rather unusual, but far from glorious. But that obedience of the shepherds took them to places they wouldn't have gone, and when they saw it for themselves, they went back to their old life of shepherding with glory and praise for God pouring from their lips. And likely, that is what happens to us. We don't become glorious, but we are filled with inexpressible joy and talk about God, about seeing God, in a way we didn't expect. He came down to our level, sure, as baby Jesus, but He did also let us know that He wasn't just like us. He WAS different. He was worth the worship of angels. He was worth the worship and glorification that 2 special people at the temple would give him a week later. And the more we see the difference, the more we can't believe that He would stoop down to be with us. And we can't stop thinking about it and telling others that we are forever changed.

Joy. The shepherds were filled with pure, unadulterated joy. God chose Mary to mother Jesus, Joseph to father Him, and shepherds to spread the word of the birth of the Savior. They, the outcasts of the culture, were chosen over all others in the world to see the Christ, to identify Him to the world as such. He sent angels to all of them to confirm their stories. They weren't imagining this. They weren't mistaken about what they thought about this baby. They weren't worthless nobodies in the eyes of God. They were angels themselves, messengers to anyone on earth who would listen to them, for that is what angel means – messenger.

And they were a comfort to Mary. How many months had it been since the angel appeared to her? To Joseph? So I am sure that hearing from the shepherds that angels had appeared to them as well must have reassured her that she was on the right track, that all the pain she had experienced as a pregnant single woman and through childbirth was worth every minute. They told her that the angels told them that this baby was the Christ, the Savior of the world, and that this good news would be for all people, for all that God wanted to save. This was the fulfillment of generations of prophecy happening to them. Who wouldn't be excited, relieved, and encouraged that God was in all of this process.

This baby in cloth born in a barn was a sign. He was a sign. We think of the star as the sign. We think of the angels as a sign. We look at nativity scenes and sparkling lights and Christmas trees as signs of the Christ-birth. But the baby was the sign. He is it. He is the sign of what? He is the sign that the Savior had come. And that means something...we NEEDED a savior of some sort. And nothing and nobody else could save us. We are sinners. We need saved from sin. And the one who would be able to do that had finally come...it would take 33 years for it to be accomplished, but they didn't know that. They just knew that God wanted to save them. They were important to God, and He wanted them saved. But He couldn't do it around His own law. He had to fulfill it in the Christ as He had told them through Moses and the prophets. They had waited forever for this...from Adam and Eve to the shepherds...they had waited. Who knew when and where and to whom? And now they were partakers in it. And if nothing else, they all knew that night that God was going to do this in an unimaginable way. He was the sign that God was ready to make peace with sinful man. It wasn't going to be easy or normal or painless, but He was going to do it through sacrifices, His, and Mary's, and also the sacrifices of the praise of the shepherds. And it was met not with scoldings and I-told-you-sos. It was met with joy and praise and happiness and love and cuddles and smelly hay. And with scraps of cloth.