The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
(We do not normally send a message on Sunday, but this one is ready to go, so…)
"The Shepherd's Search"
"God's present way most often involves mangers and crosses rather than the palaces, pomp, and circumstance our natural reasoning might lead us to expect regarding His bestowal of the King of kings."
We do well to search for God where we least expect Him to find Him.
"Ye shall find the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger" (Luke 2:12).
Gabriel sent the shepherds on a mission of discovery, but in a direction unexpected and likely puzzling. A baby? Lying? In a feeding trough for animals? Scripture does not record the shepherds' initial reaction to such a strange possibility. The chronicle of our own personal history does, however. How often God directs us to places, people, and venues of our Lord's presence that puzzle, challenge, and trouble us. Certainly, we find Him in pleasant conditions and circumstances, and we rejoice in our obvious blessings. However, God often awaits us in mangers, garbed in the swaddling rather than the silken, and seemingly still when we would rather see Him walking and working. "Arise, O God, plead Thine own cause" asked the Psalmist in one of the silliest, but nevertheless most understandable prayers recorded in Scripture, by one who, like all, had difficulty in seeing that God never ceases to plead His "own cause" (Psalm 74:22; Ephesians 1:11).
From our vantage point of the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, and the history of God's working among the saints, we see quite clearly that the resting baby, lying in the strangest of cradles, was God at His best and most active. "God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him" (I John 4:9). We can forget along the pathways of life, however, that God's personal way for us at present most often involves mangers and crosses rather than the palaces, pomp, and circumstance our natural reasoning might lead us to expect regarding His bestowal of the King of kings. Like the shepherds, our Heavenly Father beckons us to search for the Lord Jesus where it seems He could not be. "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment" (John 7:24). Moreover, when God seems to be in the repose of lying in a manger, or hanging on a cross, He actually works most mightily in rescue and redemption. Like the shepherds long ago, our Father beckons us to search for His Son in places of grace that for all the world seem as if they they could not be the scene of His glorious presence and mighty working. But they are.
"I will look for Him."
(Isaiah 8:17)
Weekly Memory Verse
Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
(John 7:24)
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