Being from the South, I love ribs. I remember hearing about this particular restaurant that had amazing ribs, and a bunch of my friends and I drove 50 minutes to get there. The place was packed, and the food was great. It was "all you can eat rib night," and rib bones were piling up as fast as the line to get in. Eating ribs is messy business. Barbecue sauce gets on your face, fingers, and clothes; dirty napkins pile up next to half-eaten bowls of baked beans and cole slaw. When our crew had eaten all we could eat, we paid our tab and waddled out to the car.

That's when I reached into my pocket for my keys and came up with nothing but lint. Starting to panic, I looked through the window at the ignition. I was hoping that I had locked my keys in the car, because in the back of my mind a more disgusting possibility was taking shape. When I saw that the ignition was empty, I knew exactly where my keys were—the keys to my car, my house, and my office. Only seconds earlier, those precious keys had slid right off my tray and followed a half-eaten corn cob and several bones to the bottom of a trash can. I had thrown away my keys on all you can eat rib night.

It was a long walk home, and my friends certainly weren't going to do my dirty work for me. So I dove in. I fished through bones, beans, barbecue, corn, cake, cole slaw, and a host of saliva-soaked napkins. A shiny layer of trashcan slime had coated my arms before I finally grasped hold of those precious keys.

As I meditate on the Incarnation this Christmas season, I think about our dumpster-diving God. I mean no disrespect by calling him that. On the contrary, I have a soaring adoration for the infinite God who left a pristine, sinless heaven to search through the filth and rubbish of this fallen world for something precious to him—me.