In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world… and everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth… to Bethlehem because he belonged to the house and line of David. Luke 2:1-4 

Making a 90 mile trip on the back of a donkey in the middle of winter during the last few days of pregnancy wouldn’t be on my top ten list for Christmas and I doubt it was on Mary’s. (Of course, there was no such thing as Christmas…yet.) But here she was, as big as a house, feeling every bump in the road, mile after mile as she left all that was familiar and inched towards everything unknown. When would they arrive? Where would they stay when they got there? How long would labor last? How would they support themselves? Would their family and friends ever accept their new baby as a gift from God? So many questions, so few answers. How was she to know that things would get way worse before they got better? Of all of the nightmares a young mother can have, not being able to find a place to stay while in active labor and then giving birth in an outdoor stable has to be near the top. That’s quite a lot for a teenage girl and her new husband to handle. Not exactly the honeymoon that Joseph had planned. 

It’s so easy for us to run to the end of the story. Well, they needed to get to Joseph’s home town because the Old Testament prophet Micah has prophesied 650 years earlier that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem; and Jesus needed to be born of a virgin so that the Son of God would be born without a sin nature; and what better way to demonstrate to the world that God was identifying with his people than to be born in poverty…. And while all of that may be true, I kind of think that none of that would have impressed Mary and Joseph very much. All they knew was, these hardships were a part of God’s plan. Their role was to trust God and walk in moment by moment dependence on him. He knows what He’s doing; we just have to rest in faith. When Mary said to the angel, “May it be to me as you have said (Luke 1:38)” she exchanged control and the right to know for being ‘highly favored’ and the assurance that ‘the Lord is with you.’ (Luke 1:28) In hindsight, that was a pretty good decision. 

Today we face much the same decision. These are difficult days. We can roil and retch over hardships and spin endless theologies about why things happen the way they do, or we can walk with God within our trials. As God’s child, you too are ‘highly favored’ and Emmanuel has come- ‘God is with us.’ 

May the Peace of this Christmas Season rest with you and may you experience the surpassing presence and power of God within the trials you face.