Wendy Bakker sent this article written by her brother which captures the “shock value” for the birth of Jesus. Enjoy…

And You Will Find Him In A Blue Box
By Lloyd Rang (published in Christian Courier, December 13 Issue)

I have never met a shepherd.

I’ve never been to the “swaddling cloths” section of Zeller’s.

I have never seen a manger – although I pitched my share of hay bales, growing up.

And although I’m sure Quirinius, the governor of Syria, was a big deal back in his day, I know nothing about him.

I’ll bet you don’t, either.

The thing is, 2000 years ago, swaddling cloths and mangers were commonplace, everyday items.

Today, they sound exotic.

And then, there were shepherds. In Jesus’ time they were the butt of jokes. Social outcasts. And yet today, when our kids put on Christmas pageants, the Shepherds are always immaculately dressed in terrycloth bathrobes.

And that’s the problem with the Christmas story, as told in the Gospel of Luke. It’s so full of things that are alien to us that it sounds practically majestic. And, so, we miss the point.

Jesus wasn’t born into a world that was expecting him. He wasn’t born into some historical Hallmark Moment where everyone looked their Sunday best. He was born into a busy, working world. But because his time is so distant from our own, we forget just how amazing it was that the divine should come to a world so mundane.

So imagine the story if Jesus were born now – in an ordinary, workaday world? It might go something like this:

* * *

In those days, Stephen Harper decided to conduct a long-form census of all of Canada. That was back in the days when Danny Williams was Premier of Newfoundland.

Everyone had to go back where they were born to do the paperwork. So Joseph drove his minivan from Thunder Bay to Toronto, where his family came from. Mary, his fiancé, was seven months pregnant, but she came along anyway.

When they got to Toronto, all the hotels were booked, because so many people were doing the exact same thing as Joseph. They searched all over until, finally, one hotel manager agreed to rent them some cots in his hotel’s boiler room.

The child was born, right there, amid all the noise, next to the brooms and the buckets and the mops.

Mary wrapped him up in hotel towels and put him in a recycling bin so he could sleep. It was the best she could do.

A few doors away, a group of computer programmers were pulling an all-nighter, writing code and eating stale pizza.

Suddenly, in a bright flash, an angel of the Lord appeared in the middle of their cubicles and said:

“Don’t be scared. I’m here to tell you about the greatest event in history. Tonight, in Toronto, a child has been born who will be the Savior of the world. He will bring joy to all people, everywhere. He’s Christ, the Lord. And you will find him, sleeping in a recycling bin, in the boiler room of the Holiday Inn.”

Suddenly the entire office was filled with angels, praising God and singing.

When the angels left, the programmers jumped up and said: “We have got to see this!” And after they found Mary and Joseph, and the baby in the recycling bin, they Tweeted about it, and posted it on Facebook, and told all their friends what they had seen.

But Mary kept all of this to herself, and treasured it.

* * *

When you tell the story like that, it sounds like sacrilege, doesn’t it?

But that’s the point! That’s why the story contains so much detail. Luke didn’t want to make Christ’s birth feel distant and remote – he wanted it to feel nearby and immediate. He wanted people feel like they could have seen Christ’s birth with their very own eyes. That it was the most natural thing in the world.

However, Luke also wanted to show just how extraordinary and supernatural it was.

Because who, in their right mind, would believe a bunch of sweaty IT Nerds who said they’d met the Son of God? Who would believe a bunch of pizza-scarfing social outcasts hopped up on Red Bull? Who would believe the savior of mankind would be born in a Blue Box in the boiler room of a downtown Toronto Holiday Inn?

Imagine THAT on a Hallmark card!

For us, the Christmas story has taken on a sheen and a pageantry all of its own. And yet, believing such a tall tale would have required the people of Luke’s time to take an enormous leap of faith. To see past the everyday details of Jesus’ birth and beyond, into God’s plan for all of us.

Today, it still does