Tuesday, January 3
What a start!
Scripture: Matthew 2
Observation
What a start! God comes to earth as a baby to save us…and nothing was easy!
Mary and Joseph are forced by a Roman decree to travel to Bethlehem when she is near full term, and give birth to Jesus in a borrowed stable, alone, far from the presence of friends and family.
They are visited by Gentile astrologers who bring expensive gifts and worship their infant son. The gifts would shortly prove vital as they provided for the young family as they fled for their lives. The other major players in the story had very different reactions: Herod the king tried to kill Jesus; the Jewish religious leaders ignored him—they were indifferent and couldn’t be bothered to make the short journey to Bethlehem.
God spoke through a dream and they narrowly escaped death by fleeing to Egypt where they lived as refugees from persecution. Alone again.
Directed once more by God through a dream, they returned to Israel, only to discover that Herod’s son Archelaus, who was more dangerous than his father, now reigned. Through another dream, they decided to return to Galilee, back home to Nazareth—an obscure and insignificant town. (“Jesus of Bethlehem” would have been a significant name and carried messianic overtones. “Jesus of Nazareth” carried overtones of contempt.)
God comes to earth as a baby to save us…and nothing was easy! It was messy at every turn.
Application
Often we point to everything going well as a sign that God is leading or at work. “It’s the Lord,” we say. Well…that’s not how the Jesus story starts. It was trouble at every turn. Oppression, loneliness, opposition, indifference, attempted murder, becoming refugees, settling in Nazareth to avoid another murderous king. Nothing was easy. It was a rocky start.
Yet God was at work. In the midst of the mess, God was invading our world to save us.
What’s the mess I’m in right now? Rather than assuming God has abandoned me, let’s assume that God is at work and trust Him. Let’s believe that the incarnation means that God inhabits our mess to redeem us!
Prayer: I love You Lord. Help me see Your redemptive work in the midst of my mess. Help me to believe that You inhabit the mess and not just the happy parts of my story.