When Jesus was on earth, virtually no one believed he was the Messiah precisely because he was so ordinary, so unlike what they imagined God to be. People were looking for a Messiah. When Christ finally appeared, they were disappointed. They’d expected a superstar, a king, a miracle worker, someone who would, by miracle and hammer, vindicate good, destroy evil, and turn the world rightfully upside down. Jesus didn’t live up to those expectations. Born in a barn, preaching meekness and gentleness, unwilling to use power forcefully, there was little hammer and few miracles. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that there was mainly ordinariness. Curiously, Scripture refuses to describe what Jesus looked like. It never tells us whether he was short or tall, with a beard or without, had light or dark hair, or blue or brown eyes. Neither does it ever assign to him anything extraordinary in terms of psychological countenance: for example, it never tells us that when Jesus entered a room, his eyes were so penetrating and his gaze so awesome that people knew they were in the presence of something extraordinary. No, Scripture doesn’t describe him because, in terms of physical appearance, Jesus wasn’t worth describing, he looked like everyone else. Even after the resurrection, he is mistaken for a gardener, a cook, and a traveler. People had trouble recognizing Jesus as God incarnate because he was so ordinary, so immersed in the things they took for granted. He was just a carpenter’s son, and he looked like everyone else. Things haven’t changed much in 2,000 years. Seldom does Christ meet expectations. We desire proof of the existence of God even as life in all its marvels continues all around us. We tend to look for God everywhere except in the place where the incarnation took place – our flesh. 1 John 4:7-16, says: “God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him/her.” Love is a thing that happens in ordinary life, in kitchens, at tables, in workplaces, in families, in the flesh. God abides in us when we abide there. The Christ-child is also to be found in church, in the sacraments, and in private meditations (for these, too, are ordinary). All of these are ordinary, and the incarnation crawls into them and helps us abide in God.