By now the Scriptures say the angels had already departed and gone back to heaven. In the dim morning light the barn would not look like heaven on earth - coarse straw, a sorely cow, a cat angered at having lost one of its favorite places to sleep. And the Baby? He would have looked like just another child born into hopeless circumstances - a teenage mother, crushing poverty, a country always at war.

Yet for those with eyes to see this Baby is the Hope of the world - Hope Himself wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. This is the way God chose to come to us. 

That ought to tell us something.