Yesterday's daily bread was in the form of a morning-long feast. Worship was active and rich. The prayers offered and the testimonies shared were powerfully stated. The Eucharist introduction challenged us to check the condition of our hearts via a wonderful personal example of how muscles become hard when we aren't using them. It was one of those mornings when everything weaves together creating a seamless message. And then came the sermon...the most powerful, passionate telling of the Gospel that I've ever heard. The "moron logic" of it astonished me again.
The story didn't unfold in the way any of us would have written it. As Ned said, "I would have made action figures!" Indeed, all of us would have made it something flashy and unable to be missed. Humans are that way. Sometimes we hear about a lover who shouts his affections from the rooftops or the mountaintops or plans his marriage proposal by arranging for the stadium scoreboard to flash at half-time, "Jessica, will you marry me?"
Well, God had some brilliant moves up His sleeves too, like a dark hillside suddenly ablaze with angels announcing in their trumpet-like voices, "Glory to God in the highest..." But then the story takes an unexpected turn.
The angels don't part into two neat halves like the Red Sea so that the God of Heaven can proceed to earth draped in royal garments and kingly jewels. There is no crown here. There is no sceptor.
Isaiah had given us some clues. We'd been told about Bethlehem, and a virgin birth. Then there on that starry night came the angel's clue: "You'll know you have the right one by this: You'll find a baby...in a manger."
Is that the one you've found?
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