Christmas Thought

I had a thought reading the Christmas story yesterday, from Luke 2:12 “This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

A sign, in this context, is something notable and extraordinary that testifies to something God pronounced. Now, the Bible has a lot of signs that God used throughout history: a fleece that was dry when the ground was wet, a shadow moving backward up a staircase, water coming from a rock by speaking to it, fire coming down from heaven and consuming a sacrifice. All of these signs were notable and extraordinary because they were impressive, and that was how they could be recognized as being from God.

But I find it instructive that God didn't choose a sign like that to point to Jesus. In fact, the sign that the shepherds were given so that they could recognize Christ was something so humble that it would've been remarkable: what parents wouldn't even have proper clothes for their baby, and how extraordinary was it to find a baby who didn't have a bed or a crib, but was laying in a feeding trough? The sign that the shepherds were given to recognize who the Savior of the World was wasn't something so majestic that it was remarkable, it was something so lowly that it was remarkable.