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Advent 2025 December 16: Such a Strange Way to Save the World

 … I'm sure he must have been surprised

At where this road had taken himCause never in a million livesWould he have dreamed of Bethlehem
… And standing at the mangerHe saw with his own eyesThe message from the angel come to lifeAnd Joseph said
… Why me, I'm just a simple man of tradeWhy Him with all the rulers in the worldWhy here inside this stable filled with hayWhy her, she's just an ordinary girlNow I'm not one to second guessWhat angels have to sayBut this is such a strange way to save the world
… To think of how it could have beenIf Jesus had come as He deservedThere would have been no BethlehemNo lowly shepherds at His birth
… But Joseph knew the reasonLove had to reach so farAnd as he held the Savior in his armsHe must have thought
… Why me, I'm just a simple man of tradeWhy Him with all the rulers in the worldWhy here inside this stable filled with hayWhy her, she's just an ordinary girlNow I'm not one to second guessWhat angels have to sayBut this is such a strange way to save the world
This song speaks to me at a level that I suspect is deeper for me than for others. Or maybe not. 
The gospel story is strange, but that by no means reflect on its truth. 
Why didn't Jesus just come and take care of all of the redeeming the world and cleaning up the mess humanity made of everything--the first time?
Why humility, then poverty, and death, and resurrection and ascension, and millenia of waiting?
Because, we might say, He is patient. The first time He showed the boundaries of love--that there were none, eve brutal execution at the hands of the masters of brutality. 
In some ways, that sounds like an excuse. A way of getting around the question. There has been an awful lot of sin an suffering since 30 A.D. It could have ended. 
That is human skepticism talking, not faith. And not the perspective of a time-less and space-less God, whose mercies are new every morning. 

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