If there is any story familiar to believers around the world, it is this one found in Luke 2:1-7. How a census had been called. How Joseph and Mary, late in pregnancy, had made that arduous trip south to their ancestral home of Bethlehem. How they had found no place to stay. How they’d found “lodging” with the animals.
Much imagery has grown up around the few facts Luke gives us. But the central point in this very brief story is that he, Jesus, was born. After fathering four of my own children, I am convinced there is no convenient time to have a child. This time, for Joseph and Mary, was the worst of all possibilities. They had no choice but to go, both of them. And so they went.
Life was hard in those days, even on those not so poor. Such travails were taken for granted as the default in life. There was almost a fatalistic attitude toward problems. But fatalism it was not. For their lives were not in the hands of arbitrary fate, but in the One who is faithful and who had promised them a son like no other.
If the child really were the Messiah, would he be born in such a situation? I doubt the thought ever crossed the minds of Mary and Joseph. That they, of all people, would even be parenting the Messiah was inconceivable in the first place. After that, everything else was far less dramatic.
Mary and Joseph were simple people and in their “low estate”, they had learned to take life one step at a time. God was planning the big events, like birth announcements. All they had to do was take care of the basics, like cloths to wrap him in and straw to bed him in.
Joseph and Mary had already long ago discovered that faithfulness is not measured in dramatics. It is measured in a thousand small steps of dependability and obedience. That is why they were chosen as parents for the Messiah in the first place. Because they had already proven faithful. After that, the challenges of getting to Bethlehem and finding a place among the animals to give birth were just a few more small similarly small steps.
No comments:
Post a Comment