This Will Be a Sign To You

This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger.

 Luke 2: 12

One of the blessings of my Christian walk is that I was taught the truth of this verse without having to “unlearn” a variety of long-held, but not accurate traditions. Being raised in a Jewish home, Christmas was only celebrated vicariously through my friends. Therefore, when I became a Christian, I didn’t have a lot of other stuff to sort through. It was all new, and I am forever grateful for the many truths I was taught right from the start.

There are common stories about Mary and Joseph being so poor that they wrapped Jesus in rags, but this is not the truth of swaddling clothes. 

There was an amazing man named Bishop KC Pillai who wrote a book about Eastern customs that are often misunderstood with our Western way of thinking. In his book, Light Through an Eastern Window (1963), Pillai shares the truth of swaddling clothes. Here is what he writes,

                The sons of kings and princes in the East today are still “salted and

            swaddled.” A tiny bit of salt is rubbed on the baby to indicate that the

            parents intend to teach the child to be truthful. The baby is then wrapped

            in swaddling clothes. These are fine linen strips about two inches wide

            which are wrapped round and round the baby’s body to straighten him 

 out: arms and legs are all made straight as a ramrod. This is a sign to

God that the parents will rear the child to be straightforward before the

Lord, and free from crookedness. The child is left in this position from

fifteen minutes to two hours, while the parents meditate and make their

vows to God concerning their sacred trust which was given them when

 they received the child (pp 42-43).

This was a common custom for babies born into royal families. Because Mary knew that her son was the Son of God, she treated him as the King he truly was.

The point of this verse, however, is a two-fold “sign.”  An angel of the Lord told the shepherds that they were to head to Bethlehem and they would know they were in the right place because they would get there in this tiny window of time when the baby would still be wrapped in swaddling clothes. The other sign would be that this baby would be laying in a manger – a feeding trough, for goodness sakes!  

I’m not exactly sure how long it would take the shepherds to leave their flocks and scoot over to this barn outside of this Bethlehem inn, but I am sure it was a bit of a hike. The “sign” then would be that they would arrive while the baby was still dressed in these swaddling clothes and laying, not in plush satin and velvet, but a feeding trough of hay.

I can only imagine the thoughts these shepherds had.

Why would the Angel of the Lord come to shepherds with this amazing news? Everyone knew that their occupation was considered to be quite lowly, just slightly above taking care of pigs. Yet, the Angel of the Lord chose these poor, lower-class, and mostly outcast folks that they would see an amazing sight. The passage continues to say that when they shared about how the glory of the Lord shone around this Angel and an entire host of heavenly beings also came and praised God so that all of them heard, Mary treasured these things and pondered them in her heart. In other words, Mary understood the miraculous events around this birth.

Only the God of the Universe could orchestrate such an amazing arrival of His Son.

We all should be treasuring and pondering these thoughts because none of this was an accident. The sign that the shepherds were given to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was no ordinary baby is the very same sign that should ignite our hearts on fire! God’s plan for redeeming His people was being put into place, and it started with a group of lowly shepherds being the first to  pay their respects to the Son of God,  because the Angel of the Lord and a huge heavenly host joined in to praise God for His plan to reconcile all people back to our Heavenly Daddy once again.

It started with a baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laying in a manger.

Pillai, B.K.C. (1963). Light through an Eastern window. New York, NY: Robert Speller & Sons Publishers.