The connection?

So now what?

Ever think about the stark profound contrast - a Father God who is Spirit and Truth sending his only son into such profound earthiness? Just words unless you tie it to something concrete.

The point of concrete is that things like stable, hay, sheep, birth mean something different to people who have real life sensory experience tied to the words. I'd like to say that there's more for God to use with the story. Not that he can't act independently but hey. He's the one who sent his son to be born there - I mean here - I mean . . . .He didn't have to do that.

Does that make sense? For centuries the experiences and memories tied to those concrete words - barn, hay, sheep, birth weren't so foreign to the general public.

Some churches have live creche scenes. Do you take field trips to working farms? Sheep farms? Busy season, I know. Not a time for field trips.... Not one more thing to think about . . .

Not to downplay the Giving of the Gift. To me it makes the giving of the gift that much more profound: The Master of the Universe leaving his son as a infant in the hands of a teenage mother with an uneducated poor skilled laborer father in someone else's barn. And their first visitors were smelly dirt poor sheep farmers and foreign diplomats from the Middle East, lol! Oh. And the leading government official was out to kill him . . . but that comes later . . . the plot thickens ... and it's Christmas and He's still God and we still worship Him!

It's not being so focused on the barn that we downplay His Gift or the fact that He's God. It's soaking in the fact that he left His most precious gift in a barn and He is God.