This Will Be A Sign To You

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

Luke 2:12

At our church we have what we call “Stations of Advent.” We ask our artists to create paintings or images of ten different scenes of Jesus’s birth narrative. Each piece of art is connected to a passage of scripture and is accompanied by reflection questions. As I slowly went through each station, taking in both the artwork and the scripture passages, I was struck by a few things.

First, for Mary and Joseph, Bethlehem was not the plan. They lived in Nazareth. Their whole world was in Nazareth, including their home where they had been making preparations for the new baby. Jesus’s room was being set up in Nazareth. The place where the birth was likely to happen was being prepared in their Nazareth home. Bethlehem was not their plan.

In fact, going to Bethlehem was the result of an oppressive, pagan Caesar wanting to take a census so that he could tax the people even more. They took the 90 mile walk from Nazareth to Bethlehem because of the greed of a pagan, Roman ruler. This was not the plan. This was unexpected. And the timing of this journey couldn’t have been worse. This was not a convenient trip. This was the result of having to “do what you are told” when you are Jewish and those doing the “telling” are Roman.

When they got to Bethlehem, the guest rooms of their family who lived there were all filled because of the census. They likely waited until the last possible moment to leave Nazareth, hoping that the baby would come early so Mary wouldn’t have to make the journey pregnant.

They were likely getting to Bethlehem late compared to their relatives. And just when it couldn’t get worse, Mary goes into labor. All of their plans for Nazareth were out the window. This baby was going to arrive in Bethlehem.

But Bethlehem was not ready for a baby. There was no delivery room ready. There was no baby room ready. The only ounce of privacy they could muster was to go out and be with the animals. Laying baby Jesus in an animal feeding trough post-delivery was not the plan. The manger was not the plan. It was the result of their poverty and the Roman Emperor’s greed.

What the Lord showed me was that the manger in Bethlehem was not Mary and Joseph’s original plan. It wasn’t even their backup plan. It was the result of oppression. It was the result of poverty. The manger was not a sign of some glorious birth. It was a sign of a lack of resources.

That is the story that Mary and Joseph would have experienced on the surface. But there was this whole other thing happening behind-the-scenes that they couldn’t see, that we couldn’t see, and that had to be revealed. It had to be highlighted to us by angels and prophetic words from the Old Testament. What seemed like a mistake — what seemed like a messy, inconvenient, ruining of plans — was actually God’s plan all along.

Angels showed up to shepherds and said that the sign that this little baby was in fact the long awaited Messiah and Savior of Israel was that he would be in a manger. On the surface, the manger was a sign of ruined plans, an overcrowded city, and economic hardship. But the angels showed us something different. God transformed this manger into a different kind of sign. It became a sign that Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah. (Luke 2:8-20)

God does the same with Bethlehem. While Bethlehem wasn’t Mary and Joseph’s original plan (and it seemed like just the bad idea of a greedy Roman Emperor), Bethlehem was God’s plan all along. When the Magi showed up and asked where the Jewish Messiah was supposed to be born (Matthew 2:1-12), the chief priests and teachers of the law all pointed to Bethlehem. The city of Bethlehem was transformed from “inconvenient, ruined plan” to the prophesied plan of God reaching hundreds of years back to the prophet Micah.

And God would continue to do this throughout Jesus’s life. The ultimate example of this is how God transformed the cross, a sign of Roman oppression and torture, into a sign of forgiveness, salvation, love and grace.

God has a way of taking our ruined plans and saying, “No, this was My plan all along.” God has a way of taking our signs of darkness and despair and saying, “No, this is a sign that points back to Me.”

In the New Testament, “signs and wonders” is a nickname for miracles. Miraculous events performed by Jesus and the disciples became signs pointing people to the reality that God’s Kingdom was breaking into the world and breaking out among us. But in the story of Jesus’s birth (though His birth itself was a miracle), we also see God use other things, ordinary things, even ruined things as signs pointing to the in-breaking of His Kingdom.

God uses all kinds of signs pointing to and revealing His Kingdom on earth. Whether it be a manger or a miraculous birth, a miracle or messed-up plans, all of these signs are used to point us back to Jesus and His Kingdom.

Can you see them in your own life? What signs are appearing right now in your life to point you back to Jesus? It could be something wondrous and miraculous. It also could be your ruined plans and less-than-perfect situation.

Can you see the signs? During this Advent season, these signs are all around us if we have eyes to see.