By Polly Phillips, Communications Content Developer
Read Luke 2:1-7
Luke is a good historian. He grounds Jesus’ birth in a real place, at a real time, caught in the middle of a real, historically verifiable census. You might not love history. You might not even tolerate history! But this history is worth getting excited about.
Because this history points to a God above places, times and censuses. A God who is ordaining and weaving events in such a way that the promised Messiah would be born in Bethlehem even though his parents lived in Nazareth. A God who moves politics on a world stage in such a way that this ordinary couple with a bump make a seventy mile trek so that Caesar Augustus would have a census not just of the entire Roman world, but the entire Roman world from their home town.
The Lord is powerful to move kingdoms and kings for his purposes – and what purpose is greater than the birth of his Son come to save? Nothing is insignificant to him or in his hands, nothing then and nothing now. He is a God of the details, of people, times, places and of unavailable guest rooms.
Jesus could have had a smooth, cushy start on earth, but he didn’t. He slept in an animal’s trough not a plush travel cot. He spent the first two years of his life as refugee in Egypt. He grew up in a shabby town with a bad reputation. He followed his assumed father’s profession and became a blue-collar worker. He donned carpenter’s tools, not a crown. The prince of heaven chose to become a pauper. The grace of Jesus that meant though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor, so that we through his poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). He started life as he meant to go on, all the way to the cross: suffering in lowly, humble circumstances to bring us to the glory and riches of heaven. Let this history point you to our good and sovereign God who holds the details in his hands.