Jesus’ inauspicious entrance into the world revealed a great deal about the nature and purpose of God. It was not just about what God was doing, it was about the way God was doing it. God himself, in the person of his son Jesus Christ, taking on human nature for all time and eternity in the mystery of the incarnation. And doing so through an inconspicuous birth in a cattle stall, announced by the host of heaven to a remote handful of shepherds under the night sky, attended to by a mysterious group of astrologers from the East, arousing the machinations of a narcissistic king. None of which was without particular meaning and significance. Over the next four weeks we ponder anew what it meant and what it means, beginning this morning with Luke 2:1-5, in a message entitled, “The High Road to a Lowly Manger”.