Look for God where you least expect to find him

​Most who were looking for the Messiah in the days of his arrival were looking for a powerful, conquering king. So when the Messiah arrived wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a feeding manger, many missed him.

Why would God, the creator of the universe, choose to enter the world in such an unexpected way? Why would God arrive as a helpless baby to people awaiting a powerful man?

I wonder, was it to forewarn us that if we go about our lives looking for God where we expect to find him, we too might miss him?

If so, it's a forewarning I didn't recognize or pay heed to for much of my Christian life.

When prayers were not answered with the answers I was looking for, I assumed God was not there, or that God had no interest in attending to my desires for goodness.

When my life was overwhelmed by darkness, I assumed it was because God was busy bringing light to the people he loved. And that I was most certainly not one of them.

When at times my life became a life without hope, I came to assume that hope was a myth, a Santa Clause of sorts that people turned to in order to convince themselves of some promise of better days ahead.

But the last decade of my life, as God has weaved healing and testimony out of my most unanswered prayers, out of my darkest days, and from my most hopeless moments, I have come to know that sometimes God's loudest voice sounds a lot like silence.

Sometimes the roar of a mighty king sounds a lot like the whimper of a newborn baby.

How lucky are we that centuries removed from people missing Jesus because of preconceived notions, we have the written story of that first Christmas, we have the story a baby born too weak to walk out of a manger, yet died powerful enough to walk out of a grave.

How lucky am I, that in recent years when life has in many ways turned upside-down, that I can see that my whole life has been pointing me to recognize a God that so often operates upside-down from how I once expected my God to behave.

Thank God I know that God is equally present in trauma and in resilience.

Thank God I know that God is equally present in drunkenness and in sobriety.

Thank God I know that God is equally present in marriage and in divorce.

Thank God I know that all the signs I used to recognize as God's absence are now powerful signs of God's hand. God's hand reaching for mine.

Maybe on our way to Bethlehem, you too have a world that feels upside-down. If so, let me encourage you.

I know it seems impossible at times that a baby in a manger can answer prayers, can bring light to dark, can bring hope to hopelessness that surpasses all understanding, but I am a man writing this to you who has more than once been too weak to stand on his own, and that baby who would one day walk out of his grave has held my hand as I've walked out of mine.

Over and over. And so I reach for it these days in places I never would have before.

Don't miss God because he is not where you expect to find him. We know him well enough now to know that's often the last place he'll show up.

Hold out your hand to God where you least expect him. I promise you, he will hold it.