In those days, Caesar Augustus declared that everyone throughout the empire should be enrolled in the tax lists. This first enrollment occurred when Quirinius governed Syria. Everyone went to their own cities to be enrolled. Since Joseph belonged to David’s house and family line, he went up from the city of Nazareth in Galilee to David’s city, called Bethlehem, in Judea. He went to be enrolled together with Mary, who was promised to him in marriage and who was pregnant. While they were there, the time came for Mary to have her baby. She gave birth to her first-born child, a son, wrapped him snugly and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the guestroom.
Reflection
Have you ever waited with great anticipation for something, only to have it not work out so well? Maybe it was an Amazon package that never arrived or a present that never made its way beneath your tree. Perhaps it was those medical results that weren’t as positive as you had hoped, the raise you counted on but didn’t get, an empty parking spot at Shoprite yesterday (I hear ya!), or world peace (many of us would probably settle for familial peace, and we don’t always get that either!)
Life doesn’t always work out the way we anticipate or even hope for, which can be especially hard to take at Christmas time – when every social media post, commercial, and store billboard tells us that Christmas must be perfect because it is “the most wonderful time of the year.”
But the truth is – a lot of things about the very first Christmas didn’t work out so well either. Despite thousands of years of our collective anticipation and excitement over the coming Christ child, the biblical Christmas story wasn’t exactly a holly, jolly one in Bethlehem. The characters experience their fair share of difficulty. There was no guestroom to be found, so Jesus was born in an animal stall. Tyrannical rulers of the day would stop at nothing and spare no one to maintain their power. And so eventually, Mary and Joseph had to leave their home with their newborn to escape one ruler who wanted to hunt Jesus down. A bunch of strangers came to visit the newborn child that first night, but where were all the celebrations from their families and friends?
The first Christmas was far from perfect. And so – for those of us who feel like our own may fall short somehow this year – we are in very good company.
And I wonder if it is in all the imperfectness and things not working out that we actually come to learn what the Good News of Christmas is really all about:
Hope is born anyway,
…In the worst moments
…In the disappointments
…In our past failures and future fears.
These don’t get the final word. God does.
New life will be born.
Hope will be found, one way or another.
And God’s promises will always far exceed even our great anticipation.
Do you believe it?
by Kate Monahan
For Pondering and Prayer
Where is Christ being born in your world? Are there places – even places of great disappointment — where new life is being born in you, your relationships, or your community this day?
Prayer:
Emmanuel – God with us,
Even in all our imperfectness and disappointment,
Be born in us this day.
Just as a seed is planted and spring forth at the appointed time,
May Your hope and the promise of new life be planted in us today.
And remind us that you, O God, bring growth in due time.
Amen.
Merry Christmas!
