Perhaps it is not the gift I should sound an alarm about—because God’s gifts always pay out in the end.
Watch out for the wrapping paper. Look out for how the gift arrives and the packaging in which it arrives. If you are not discerning enough, you may judge the gift by its packaging and let it go. Later, you will discover you missed the mark.
The gift of Jesus came through an antisocial circumstance. The kind of wrapping He came in was unacceptable to Jewish society. A woman in the Jewish culture was not supposed to get pregnant outside wedlock. Deuteronomy 22:20 says, “If a man married a girl who is claimed to be a virgin and finds that she is not, “they shall bring the girl to the entrance of the father ‘s house and there her townsmen shall stone her to death”.
Mary of Nazareth, unwed and pregnant, knew the punishment she could face. She knew exactly what she would face in her home and community. A girl who became pregnant out of wedlock would have been terrified.
The whole Jewish social structure was set up for children to be born within marriage. Genealogy and ownership of children were seen as very important. Girls who became pregnant outside of marriage would probably have had to leave their homes and their families.
There was the potential of being sold into slavery or of being stoned to death. She may have been married off quickly or banished from her home and village, which may have led her to prostitution or slavery when she had no way of supporting herself.
And yet, this was the wrapping God chose to come in. He decided to be incarnated into a completely antisocial circumstance, way beyond the socio-cultural status quo of the time, hence defying the logic of the times.
Fast forward➡➡➡ No normal human being would expect the Savior to be born in a manger. Any human institution or person would have chosen the finest house, five-star hotel or the most expensive hospital for such a birth. But Jesus Christ, our Savior, was born in a manger; that was the wrapping Jesus came in. Note, therefore, that sometimes God’s greatest gifts are often wrapped in problems, anxieties, worries and chaos. God’s greatest gifts can come to us sometimes, camouflaged in a fire array of disgusting, perilous circumstances that seem insurmountable and way beyond human reasoning.
I reecho to you that great gifts can come wrapped in problems:-
Consider the following:-
1. Being fired from a job.
A young man who was stressed and distressed because he had lost his job was employed by a bigger company for the next six months, with better remuneration and far better conditions of service. Then he said to me, “If I hadn’t lost this job, I don’t think I would have gotten this new one.”
2. Where someone you thought could never hurt or leave you does just that.
A woman was about to get married, and two weeks before the wedding, there was a situation, so the marriage had to be postponed. Three weeks later, she discovered that the man she was getting married to had a wife and five children elsewhere. She has never stopped thanking God for the situation that brought about the postponement of the marriage. She became depressed and wanted to commit suicide.
With these examples, I have illustrated that sometimes God’s greatest gifts can come to us in a troubled situation. We pray for discernment to see through the times when God’s gift comes to us hidden in a difficulty, a problem or a challenge.
MOVING ON, the very first thing the Angel said to “worried Joseph” was “Fear not / Do not be afraid” – (Matthew 1:20b.)
I believe the Angel told Joseph not to fear because
i. Fear can paralyze your faith. It can limit your perspective
ii. Fear can intimidate you from growth.
3. Fear can make you give up on something prematurely;
fear can make you try to put away as Joseph tried doing – the only redemption- that was available to him. Be careful that you do not allow fear to rob you of God’s gifts.
There are three (3) types of fear, I believe engulfed Joseph, and our ability to identify these fears can enable us to deal with them in case we face them head-on in our lives.
…STAY TUNED FOR “THE JOSEPH FACTOR 105“
