When a royal is born, everybody knows about it.
It’s in the papers, the internet, magazines, tv shows.
You can’t miss it.
There’s even an expectation of the baby because people know the Queen or the Princess and see their belly growing.
It would be strange for no one to know about a royal baby being born. Maybe in a very tiny country hardly anyone would know. But if it were a royal baby that had influence over many nations, you would know about it.
Wouldn’t it be very “upside down” if a king’s birth wasn’t noticed?
We saw, in our previous session, that the baby-to-born managed to pull off the Biblical Bingo.
He was to be born from the line of David
He was to be born in Bethlehem
He was to be born from a Virgin
This is what you should expect.
Joseph and Mary get to Bethlehem and a crowd is waiting for them. The red carpet would be rolled out, CNN news is there, and cameramen are running around trying to get the best footage.
You would expect that there would be a chariot waiting for them to take them to their reserved house. When they get there they would have a staff ready to serve them through the birth and take good care of them.
Instead, they hear this devastating news.
“Sorry guys.
Bethlehem is all booked out.
No vacancies.”
It gets worse than that. No vacancies? What do you do? You need to go somewhere to have the baby.
“There’s a little cave just off the road a few miles away. You could try that!”
cried the manager of the hotel.
Usually, when a royal is born, they are in the best possible hospital.
When a royal grows up it’s in a palace, with a garden, or a few gardens.
But this is the Upside Down King.
Where was he born? Possibly a cave, maybe a barn. Worse than a 1 star hotel room.
But notice also where they placed this baby boy?
A manager.
Wait! Not a manager. A hotel manager.
Sorry, I mean a manger.
Not a manager. There was no manager of the hotel or hospital helping out here.
A manger is a pig’s feeding trough. It would have smelt bad. There would have been animals everywhere. Is this fit for a king?
Maybe an upside down King. Maybe a king who wants to get down and dirty and relate to all forms of humanity. Even though he was rich, he really did become poor.
Now there were a few people that found out about the birth. But all in all, the one that we rotate the whole calendar around, his birth wasn’t in the paper, or even the back of the paper.
But as much as this birth scenario is upside down, there’s an even more upside down thing.
And it’s got to do with the name
Immanuel