British pastor, Matthew Hosier, writes about a missionary friend who moved to a Muslim majority nation:

When we first moved to the Middle East we heard that on festival days everyone dresses in their best clothes and goes to visit their relatives and neighbors to celebrate. So, for our first Eid festival we carefully cleaned our apartment, dressed up in our best clothes, got some sweets and chocolates which are traditional to hand out to visitors and waited in our house. But no-one came to visit.

Another missionary explained what we did wrong: "On festival days, the small visit the big, and the big give out presents." For example, everyone in a family visits their eldest brother, or their parents, or grandparents. When they arrive they would kiss the hand of the older person to show respect and honor. The host would then care for their guests by feeding them, serving them, and giving them gifts like good quality chocolate, money, or other presents. As newly arrived foreigners without social standing or relatives, naturally no-one came to visit us. We are considered "small" by the culture, so we are the ones who need to do the visiting.

This incident made me ponder the awesomeness of the incarnation. In every other religion, humans (the small) try to visit God by their own strength and good works. But as much as we try to dress up nicely, we cannot be clean enough to enter his house without polluting and disrespecting it.

In the incarnation God decided to play the role both of the "small" and of the "big." He humbled himself totally to become "small" so that he could visit us in our squalid house. But also as the "big" he played the role of host and gave gifts—atonement, the Holy Spirit, and clean clothes—which means that as believers we are now appropriately dressed and thus free to enter his house without disrespecting it.