A few days ago, just before Christmas, I was driving down the road listening to Christian Christmas music. I find Christian music to be hit-or-miss; some songs I love and others have theology that makes me twitch. On that day, one song in particular gave me pause:

And Joseph said,"Why me, I'm just a simple man of trade?Why Him, with all the rulers in the world?Why here, inside this stable filled with hay?Why her, she's just an ordinary girl?Now I'm not one to second guess what angels have to say,But this is such a strange way to save the world..."

I've heard this before: We start with OUR perspective, decide what would have made sense for GOD to do, then call God's ways "strange" when God - surprise! - doesn't look like us.But what if, instead of placing our beliefs about what God should have done onto God, we start from the perspective of what God did do? What if we start with God's perspective, not ours? What if we START at the unwed peasant teenage girl, what if we start at the manger, what if we start at the scandal, what if we start with the brutal world Jesus entered?The more I discover about God, the less I think the story of Jesus' birth is strange and the more it just makes sense. I mean, that's kind of the way God usually operates: through the broken, the humble, the powerless. Most people who God called tried to get out of it, because they thought others would have made better candidates. God advocated for those without power through the prophets; Jesus spent his time with kids and tax collectors.  When God's people are doing God's work - and by that I mean feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoners, praying for their enemies, going about the general business of Love - they oftentimes aren't looked on very highly... sometimes even by people who call themselves "Christians." If you think the manger is strange, then you haven’t been paying very close attention to God.It seems to me that we miss the point a bit when we chalk up a dirty manger and culturally subversive acts to "strange" then move on with our lives. When I think about how Jesus spent his time on earth - from his earliest days in that barn to his dying breath - I have to wonder where Jesus would be if he were alive today. Because THOSE places? Those places might not be the cleanest or the prettiest. The people Jesus would talk to probably wouldn't be the ones you'd see on TV.So instead of making God look like us then calling God's acts strange, let's endeavor to be more like God. And if you can't find God, start looking in the places you might not want to go... that's where God has shown up before.