An Unmarked Package
Surprise! Nowhere on the package did it read, “From God to Humanity.” Actually, the writings for the tiny bundle preceded it by hundreds of years. It read, “unto us.” Meaning, unto humanity, a child is born. A son is given. Yet, in so many ways, this messianic gift arrived unmarked!
To say the world was not prepared for God to show up the way He did is a colossal understatement.
When you’re in much need of a King and a Kingdom, it’s easy to miss what happens in a barn. You pray for a ruler to lead you, and a baby shows up to serve you.
The God who made all things made himself nothing. The intangible became someone with skin. God already had a voice. But now, in this new package was a larynx to pass it through. The Divine Spirit was already moving. Now someone would notice. Through the motions of hands and feet, a baby carpenter was causing a stir.
Nothing about this infant occupying a crude hay rack made you think of a king. He cried. He soiled his swaddling. He burped, and then often he wouldn’t. And yet, amid all the normalcy, you could sense the supernatural. Against the backdrop of animals and their passivity came God with a passion.
His passion was to relate to us and was a gift to the world to say; this is what love looks like. This baby had overlooked the world, and now the world was about to overlook Him.
How could they?
How could we?
Could You?
Any one of us could miss the unmarked package. On the day of His birth, you would have never convinced the Inn Keeper that he had just sent the savior to the sheep shed. We, too, could miss so many valuable gifts simply because we fail to recognize the package.