God in the Familiar

When we first arrived in Taiwan, I was learning that being called to a place does not guarantee you will feel at home in that place. Traditional holiday times can be the worst for feeling out of place in a new setting. So that first Christmas in Taichung was a strange feeling indeed. Yet in the midst of all the cultural adjustment, I learned that God still came and spoke to me in very familiar ways.

Here is the significance of the manger if you ever wanted to know why a manger. The angel who announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds says in Luke 2:12, “This will be a sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

It wasn’t just any old sign – it was a sign to these shepherds. They were to look for a baby in a manger. Anyone who has lived through a Christmas pageant knows what a manger is. But aside from that, there are few people in our modern, cosmopolitan world who would find any significance in a manger.

Even back then. The wise men were not to look for a manger. They were to look for a star – something that as astrologers they were very familiar with. Of all the people in Judea who would think a manger was significant it was shepherds. Moreover, for these common shepherds, there were few things of value in their lives. They had their shepherd’s staffs. They had their slingshots. They knew what sheep pens and grass and water were. And they knew what a manger was.

Once on the high Tibetan plateau with a friend, David Plymire, I bought a slingshot off of a young sheepherder as a souvenir for my kids. David said to make it worth the young man’s while because that slingshot represented his whole livelihood. So with little cost to me, I blessed him beyond measure. Such is the focused life of a shepherd that mangers carry great significance.

Jesus’ whole birth thing was arranged so that these shepherds would know what to look for. It was a sign just for them.

When God spoke for all the ages, He spoke in a way that shepherds could understand. He spoke to them in the most familiar of terms.

And so He does with us. When He moves in our lives in very unfamiliar ways, He speaks to us in ways we can understand. He speaks to us in our own vernacular – in our own every day understanding.

One day in college a student told our Greek professor that another prof was very brilliant because he was hard to understand. Dr. Cutter replied in his usual acerbic way, “If he were so brilliant, he’d be able to explain his material to the simplest of students like you.”
Jesus while on earth was so brilliant he could explain the mysteries of the universe to the commonest of people. God can make himself understood to anyone. He uses mangers to guide shepherds. He can even talk to you.