"Magesty In A Manger"
In many ways, there was nothing particularly special about the baby or the birth. That poverty, that narrowly-averted scandal when Mary fell pregnant, that greeting party of those social misfits ( the shepherds); none of it was worthy of a king. None of it was majestic. And yet the birth of Jesus was precisely that. Within its mystery was such mighty love as only a true leader of all humankind could display. It was majesty in its purest, most marvelous form. His first breaths in a cowshed and his first steps as a refugee on the run from a despotic regime, they were exactly the kind of remarkable start that only our King of Kings would choose. And in this detail we discover a profound truth, that God was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths in order to reach us. This whole chapter in Isaiah is a key player in the Bible. It is quoted in the books of John, Matthew, and Romans to name but three, and it presents us with the clearest explanation of sin and atonement. And these verses t