by Mike Nappa

An exerpt from God in Slow Motion
December 2013 – They say there is no beauty without pain, no glory without sorrow. That seems to be true, even among – especially among – those of us whose lives are drawn toward eternity. And that’s where my breath catches in my throat, where flashes of glory begin to spin in my vision:

A woman, dusty and worn from travel. A man, knowing the child his fiancée carries is not his own. Tired. Back bent. Head bowed.
A makeshift hotel room; really nothing more than a filthy animal pen. A manger; a wooden box caked with the dried saliva and leftover feed for beasts of burden.
Horror at the thought of giving birth alone, away from family, away from friends, away from home. In this awful place.
Peace from knowing that despite everything, everything will turn out right.
A God-man who propels Himself willingly into the icy grip of a sin-wintered world that will only view Him with mocking derision and hateful distrust. A baby, bloody and wrinkled, thrust shockingly into the world. Here, in a barn.
God, bloody and wrinkled, stowed humbly, gloriously, in the animal’s food trough.

And in that moment, everything changes.

Everything.

It’s strange to picture in the mind’s eye that moment in history when Christ was born. It feels almost wrong, unfathomable. He who held all creation in His hand looked upon His world – and entered it from the inside. He who was Creator made Himself the created. 

“Unto us a child is born,” promised the prophet Isaiah, “unto us a son is given . . . The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6 KJV).

Centuries later, the physician Luke reported the fulfillment of that promise: “She [Mary] gave birth to her firstborn son,” he wrote, “and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7 NASB).

God had now become also a man. Or more specifically, a helpless, vulnerable, reliably incontinent infant. He who was self-existent and in need of nothing now needed a mother’s breast to feed Him, her loving hand to clean away His bodily waste, her patient wisdom to teach Him how to speak and walk and live. 

Unfathomable.

And humiliating, especially for one such as Him.

One has to ask why. That He would be born at all was an affront; that He would be born in a rented barn was simply degrading.

So why would God choose – willingly and eagerly – to do that? My sneaking suspicion is that God’s not too worried about living up to my expectations of Him. Or yours. Or anyone’s. His reputation in my eyes is irrelevant; His purpose in His own eyes is all that matters.

That’s frustrating for me, and it’s a stumbling block for many. But it’s telling to look back in history and realize that Jesus fulfills every promise regarding the Messiah, yet He looks almost nothing like the expectations of the people who longed for, hoped for and waited for His appearing.

The Jewish Messiah was (and still is) expected to come as a conquering king who would set up the rule of God upon earth, bringing peace and judgment at last. During Mary and Joseph’s time, many in Israel expected their conquering Messiah to come with overwhelming suddenness and force – to bypass completely that messy, inconvenient birth-growth-boy-to-man phase. In their view, He would descend from the heavens fully formed, in miraculous power, and immediately accomplish His purpose in our world. 

That type of grand, glorious entrance makes sense, at least to me. After all, Jesus is the great King. He’s the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He, of all people, is most deserving of accolades and overwhelming extravagance. If the King of kings is coming, then all humanity should trot out its finest, its best, its all, to welcome Him. In fact, God should demand that of us. To do anything less would be an insult in the face of eternity, right?

And yet, that’s not what God demanded. Truth is, God went out of His way to avoid doing that, choosing instead to incarnate Himself in a helpless baby’s body, in the second-rate city of Bethlehem. “You would think God would choose someplace elegant and grand,” sings gospel music legend Andraé Crouch. But God didn’t do that. He deliberately chose a little, podunk, nowhere-town to be the birthplace of His finest glory. And in that small place, the greatest King ever to exist took His first human breath in a stable, with the smell of animal excrement filling the air around Him.

How humiliating. How embarrassing. And how glorious.

How mischievously glorious!

God, in His great wisdom, thumbed His nose at all human expectations of greatness, choosing humility underfoot as the most resplendent setting for the opening act of His grand redemptive work. In that moment, God’s reputation in human eyes meant nothing. His saving purpose was all that mattered, and the result of that seemingly disreputable act has been greater glory than humanity could have ever imagined.

This past Christmas season in my part of the world has been filled with joy and splendor, lights and laughter, hope and even some measure of peace on earth.

And there were mangers everywhere.

Think about that.

Ancient animal troughs, so lowly and common in their day that farmers barely gave them a second thought, are now displayed with generous abandon all across the world. They are painted in gold, set up in lights, crafted from finest materials, bejeweled, designed by artists and sold with retail markups – even though they’ll never actually be used by any animal anywhere.

Today a manger is a symbol of nothing less than the glory of God Himself. Why? Because it was touched by God incarnate; and God changes everything He touches, imbuing that thing with mischievous glory for all eternity.

You and I are like that manger. Before the touch of God, we’re simply forgotten things used for base purposes. And then Jesus comes into our world, into our lives, into our homes and workplaces, and deeply into our souls.

God transforms anything He touches. It was true of that manger so many centuries ago, and it’s true in your life, in my life, today.  

Nappa’s perspective challenges believers
The creative imagery and out-of-the-box thinking of Mike Nappa (nappaland.com) bring wonder and challenge to the reader in God in Slow Motion: Reflections on Jesus and the 10 Unexpected Lessons You can See in His Life. With chapter titles like “Beautiful Sorrow: Dealing with Disappointment in God,” he entices the reader and delivers a message with insightful anecdotes and piercing principles that sometimes bring discomfort but always urge the reader toward a deeper look at his faith. 

Nappa says, “This book is about the determination … to slow down the images in the gospel accounts. To see what discoveries God has for me when I look for Him deep in the underneath things of Christ’s life and my own. To risk studying God in slow motion.”

Available at bookstores and online booksellers.
Review by Randall Murphree