Devotions for 12-4-24
Luke 2:6 “And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth.”
Christmas! We are in the Christmas season, or advent as it is called in the church. This is the time of the year that we remember the birth of Jesus. We all know the story, every person who has any connection to a Christian church knows the story. Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem because the Roman Emperor decided to impose a tax and wanted the people to be counted. When they came to Bethlehem there was no room for them at the inn so Jesus ended up being born in a stable, likely a cave, and laid in a manger.
We know the story. It is a very familiar story. I know the story. I have told this story many times over 42 years being a pastor and many before that hearing it every year in church and other ways every Christmas season.
But this year it hit me in a new way. We have a grandchild that is waiting to be born. He isn’t due until early March, not at Christmas. We did have one of our sons born on Christmas Eve one year which gave a whole new twist to our family Christmas celebrations. A wonderful twist. But the coming birth of this grandchild has caused Christmas to take on a new look or new understanding for me this year.
A couple of days ago, mom and baby, who live where hospitals are not equipped for major health complications, were airlifted to a hospital here in the Denver area. Mom is having problems with her pregnancy and needs specialized care. The baby could come months early.
Her health issues related to this pregnancy caused me to think back to Joseph and Mary and the birth of Jesus. It seems to have been a normal pregnancy and normal birth. But there is no doubt that they worried about all the what ifs. What if this or that complication arose? What could happen if… Every parent awaiting the birth of a child has those thoughts. What if?
Back when Joseph and Mary had those thoughts, there was no airlift to a big city hospital. Back then there was no treatment for most special situations regarding the birth of a baby. At their time, the what ifs usually led to sad results.
Thankfully, for Joseph and Mary those what ifs did not develop. The only one that did was that they had to travel when Mary was due to deliver and ended up having the baby in a place less than dignified or desired. She had her baby where people usually kept their livestock, not expectant moms and were far from home.
Our daughter-in-law gets to await the birth of her baby in a clean hospital. Not at home like she would have liked and expected, but still in a nice place even if it is far from home. She and baby are well taken care of. For them, it is dad who has all the issues to deal with between caring for their son at home, trying to work and visiting mom in the hospital hundreds of miles from home. Mom is doing fine, dad is running.
The new understanding I am seeing this Christmas is twofold. Joseph and Mary had to deal with the birth of their baby while travelling far from home, like our son and wife are doing, and they had to deal with all the what ifs that go with every pregnancy.
Fortunately for Joseph and Mary they had one source of help, help that we can all have as well and that our son and his wife have too. They had God’s help. God was there to help them in the birth of their baby. He made that abundantly clear to them when the angel said to Joseph what God spoke through Isaiah the prophet, that His name would be called Emmanuel, God with us. Joseph and Mary had God on their side. They had God with them.
The good news for all of us is that as believers in Jesus, we have that for our lives too. We have Emmanuel with us, we have God with us in every situation.
Pastor Gary
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