It’s hard for us to hear the story of Christmas without thinking of all the children’s pageants we’ve seen – little five and six year-olds on stage in makeshift robes and fake beards, the angels dressed in sheets and wearing tinfoil wings, sometimes missing their entrances and stumbling over the lines and occasionally knocking over a prop. It’s a precious scene that brings back the best of memories. But the original event wasn’t quite that charming and it was far more than a children’s Christmas program.
There were no cute costumes and no missed entrances. When the angels spoke their lines, the response wasn’t, “Ahhh, isn’t that sweet? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were true?” Instead the response was, “Oh my goodness. This changes everything. This turns everything upside down.”