Atom“God’s Christmas Plans and Ours”
“Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth to Galilee, to Judea, to the city of David, called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.” Luke 2:4-5
I’m on my way to Nebraska this week. I’m going to do a little hunting and drink a little coffee with the farmers of my first congregation. We’ll ride around in pick-ups and tell a lot of stories, most of them true. And we’ll laugh and renew friendships and drink more coffee. It’s an annual get-together I look forward to, kind of like many of you look forward to “Deer Camp” or the way many of us are already beginning to look forward to Thanksgiving or Christmas – a time to get the family together and eat and laugh and reconnect with people we love. Thanksgiving and Christmas is about thanking God and celebrating the birth of Jesus, but it’s also a lot about spending some extra time with people we love and care about.
That being said, I was looking ahead at the Christmas story as we enter into December, and I was thinking about Joseph and Mary’s “Christmas Journey” to see family. Except, as I read the story, it’s a little hard to pick up that they really had a “family reunion” with people that they hadn’t seen lately, but who were anxiously awaiting their arrival. It might in fact be that Joseph and Mary had never before been to Bethlehem and didn’t really know any of the “family” there. Travel in those days was certainly not so easy as it is for us and this may have been a once in a life-time trip that they would never have taken if it had not been for Caesar Augustus and God.
It would be a little like me going back to Valley City, ND where my mother’s mother grew up, or even further, back to Norway, where they emigrated from. I wouldn’t know anyone there and they wouldn’t know me. I would be a stranger in a strange land. But, if I was sent by God…well? Would I go? Would I risk going to a place I had never been before, meeting people I had never met before, doing things I had never done before? Would I have the sense of purpose and direction that Joseph and Mary had in leaving that which they knew to venture into something they knew nothing of except that God was leading? I’m not sure…but I’d like to think so…
During the Advent Season – the “season of preparation” for our Lord’s coming and the Christmas season, and in honor of Joseph and Mary’s journey into the unknown, I am going to be praying about and looking to do something I have never done before, to meet someone that I have never met before, to serve in a way that I have never served before…
I invite you to consider doing the same…in celebration of Mary and Joseph’s daring faithfulness…and…in recognition that our God seems to like doing things that have never been done before…in places we have never visited before…with people we have never met before…as God did so long ago with a young couple who followed God’s lead to Bethlehem. Let me know where God leads you and what you learn…I’ll be doing the same.
Following with you,
Pastor Wade
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