“This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Luke 2:12

BOOM! What was that? I went out to see what had happened, but all seemed well. Then I remembered that the Space Shuttle was returning to earth. It was to enter earth’s atmosphere over NE Tennessee. The morning news confirmed that was what had happened.

Our Lord entered this world with only the sounds of common life. There was no boom to announce the powerful Immanuel, just the sounds of stable animals, hushed voices of a nervous mother and father, and outside, the night life of an overcrowded small town.

A country song has the words, “looking for love in all the wrong places.” The song wasn’t at all about Christ, yet it could be an Advent thought. Many were waiting on the Messiah to come, but no one would have imagined that He was sleeping in their town, in a stable.

John wrote nothing about the birth of Jesus, but he did write that God put on human flesh and came unto his own, and his own knew him not. Do we sometimes miss him because we just don’t expect him to be in the everyday places of common life? “You will find him,” is what the angels said to believing shepherds. Just a few miles up the road, king Herod with all his resources couldn’t find the newborn Prince of Peace.

Will we, have we, found Christ? “You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. I will be found by you…” Jeremiah 29:13-14a

“Sweet little Jesus boy
They made you be born in a manger
Sweet little holy child
We didn’t know who you were
Didn’t know you’d come to save us Lord
To take our sins away
Our eyes were blind, we could not see
We didn’t know who you were.”