Christmas is around the corner, and while some might find themselves lost in debates about when Jesus was really born and pagan traditions associated with the holiday, there’s no denying that it’s ultimately and intrinsically rooted in the birth of Christ. And as we see Nativity displays pop up across our communities, I’ve started thinking about what it took to get there.
When we think of the birth of Christ, we often default to imagery of Jesus, His parents, and the Three Wise Men in the manger, surrounded by farm animals. But I feel like we can easily gloss over or take for granted all they had to endure to do what God had called them to.
I remember reading this article that dove into the logistics of Mary and Joseph’s journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, putting it in a context that the contemporary American could understand.
“Making that 90-mile journey would be like walking almost halfway through Pennsylvania from north to south: over the hills surrounding Allentown in the north, then east to the Delaware River, and south to Philadelphia…’In antiquity, the most we find people traveling is 20 miles a day. And this trip was very much uphill and downhill. It was not simple’…Strange estimates Joseph and Mary likely would have traveled only 10 miles a day because of Mary’s due date…And what’s the Judean desert like during winter? ‘Sort of like New Jersey…It’s in the 30s during the day, rains like heck. It’s nasty, miserable. At night it would be freezing’…One of the most terrifying dangers in ancient Palestine was the heavily forested valley of the Jordan River, Strange said. The woods there burgeoned with flesh-eating beasts such as lions and bears. Travelers also feared attack by wild boars. Archaeologists have unearthed documents warning travelers of the forest’s dangers, he said…’Bandits, pirates of the desert and robbers’ were common along the major trade routes like the one Joseph and Mary would have traveled…The threat of outlaws often forced solitary travelers to join trade caravans for protection.”
Joseph and Mary weren’t on a casual hike or a turkey trot. Their trip was dangerous, long and physically demanding.
God gave them what was arguably the most important task in the history of mankind, and He didn’t make any of it easy.
He entrusted them with bringing His Son into the world – and turned their lives completely upside down in the process.
He chose an unwed engaged virgin to deliver Jesus knowing exactly how scandalous and controversial it would be – not just for Mary, but for Joseph.
He chose a timeline coinciding with the first Roman census, sending them on a 90 mile voyage filled with bears, bad weather and bandits.
And after they finally reached their destination, they couldn’t even get a room with walls and a bed.
Even in bestowing Mary with the honor of baring His Child, He marked her for immense suffering, knowing that she would eventually have to see her Son beaten, abused and hanging lifeless on a cross for sins He never committed.
All of it was by design, and I believe all of it was for a reason.
I won’t pretend to fully understand what God hasn’t fully explained in His own words. But I think God made a virgin trek 90 miles to give birth to His Son in a manger because it showed the world exactly who He was. By impregnating a virgin, He proved Himself as the almighty and ultimate author, completely unbound by our feeble human minds. His timing forced her far away from home, without a place to stay, giving birth to the King of Kings outside in a stable, contradicting everything we thought we knew about where power really comes from.
God used controversy, struggle, and misfortune to send our Salvation, and reveal His authority in a magnitude that we’d never seen.
On more than one occasion I’ve found myself completely frustrated with God and the things He’s allowed to happen in my life. The hard part is never over. I never expected to reach a point where I was completely free of stress or turmoil. But God has watched me pray the same prayer and cry the same tears over and over and after a certain point I wasn’t sure what He could be trying to teach me. It wasn’t like I was just doing the same things and sticking to the same habits but praying for a different result. There wasn’t a logical explanation for it. It felt like He was torturing me because He could.
When our lives are rife with difficulty, it’s easy to feel like God isn’t paying attention, or doesn’t care. At our weakest moments, we might even feel like He’s antagonizing us.
Some of the obstacles we face will be the consequences of our own actions. Some will be the result of living in a cruel, broken world where life is unfair. But maybe the hardships God allows in our lives are for a reason. Maybe what we think of as an inconvenience, an embarrassment, or a bone-crushing burden is actually serving a purpose that we know nothing about – and are maybe even necessary to facilitate God’s greatest blessings in our lives.
We want to live comfortably and conflict-free, forgetting that the people used most often by God rarely ever do.
If God called His own perfect and blameless Son to die a violent and horrific death, maligned and persecuted in the years leading up to it, why do we think our lives are supposed to be easy?
God isn’t great in spite of the torment He allows into our lives – He’s great because of it. Because He uses all of it to engineer beauty and redemption that never could have come to be without it.
what do you think?