Down to Earth
Wes Wick
Because the Christmas story is so familiar, we sometimes forget how truly radical it is.
“Down to earth” is an admirable quality: Real, not putting on airs, humble. And what could be more down-to-earth than Jesus leaving heaven and making His lowly stable entrance?
A teenage virgin travels out of town by donkey in her final month of pregnancy ... such an impossible, improbable beginning saga for God’s only Son!
In our upwardly mobile culture, we tend to look for better and avoid eye contact with those struggling.
We’re certainly not opposed to higher education, financial equity, and interaction with people seemingly higher up the food chain.
But from the very start of this story, God identifies with people in humble circumstances. Apart from divine revelations through angels, a star and bright lights, Jesus in the manger would be off our radar … not a scene we’d be drawn to.
What a reminder to pay attention to those around us in desperate, dismal situations.
More than three decades later, in Matthew 25, Jesus encourages us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, show hospitality to strangers, provide for those needing clothes, and look after the sick and imprisoned.
44-45 (NIV) “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Having a servant’s heart means we humble ourselves and look at others with compassion, eyeball to eyeball, as though we’re looking into the eyes of Jesus.
Now, two millennia later, the manger scene still beckons. It’s not too late to visit Jesus, bearing gifts. And yes, we’re still young enough to serve!