Unexpected Gifts

As the New Testament opens, every one of God’s chosen people was hoping for the promised Messiah. What they never expected was their promised Savior coming as a baby in a manger. Three different times in the Christmas story, an angel of the Lord appears to a person or group of people and declares the coming of Jesus. In this 3-week Christmas series, we examine how Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds in the fields reacted when they heard the news of Jesus’s coming, and how their reactions can teach us to respond to God’s unexpected gifts today.