Announcements. Engagements. Weddings. Pregnancies. Births. Exciting stuff; but the ordinary stuff of life, really. They are the kind of events you expect to hear about as you listen for the signs and sounds that signal the progression of the lives of the people around you.
Children are born. They grow up. They fall in love. They get married. They have babies. Life goes on. It’s the ordinary stuff of life.
Mary. Joseph. Nazareth. You might expect another ordinary story. That was what Mary expected. That was what Joseph expected. They knew that was what their friends and family expected, too. Nevertheless, in the middle of their ordinary lives, something extraordinary happens.
Angels come to visit. Mary and Joseph were each observant practitioners of their faith, but there is nothing to suggest they regularly received direct messages from God. Mary is confused and disturbed when the angel Gabriel gives her the news that she is going to have a son. Joseph is making his own plans to deal with the situation until an angel speaks to him in a dream. Will anything in their lives ever be ordinary again?
It is more than an idle question. They have heard the news that God is going to enter their lives. The son they are to raise will save his people from their sins. (Matthew 1:21) He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end! (Luke 1:32-33)
Still they have to find their own way to Bethlehem. When they arrive, there is no place for them to stay. Soon they are running to Egypt to save their baby’s life. Eventually they return to Nazareth—where they go back to their ordinary lives; but God has come into their lives, and now everything has changed. Transformed.
I pray you may experience the transforming presence of God in your life this Christmas.
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