So Christmas has come and gone. I mean,
we’re still kind of in the Christmas season. We still have the
decorations up. The kids are still on vacation
from school.
But really, we’re kind of
moving on from it. The presents have all been opened. The kids have broken half the toys and are
getting bored with the other half. At least, that’s how it was when I was
a kid. People are planning their New
Year’s Eve celebrations. Wanda and I
might get crazy and stay up clear past ten o’clock. And then it’ll be
time for everyone’s life to get back to normal.
After that first Christmas,
Joseph and Mary probably wanted their lives to get back to normal, too.
But that’s not how it worked out. In
fact, it was going to be a long time before their lives got back to normal
again.
We don’t know how long Joseph
and Mary stayed in Bethlehem after Jesus was born. Long enough for the
wise men to find them there, anyway. We
always put the wise men in our nativity scenes, but most people think it was
quite some time before they actually got to Bethlehem.
But now, as we pick up the
story tonight, the wise men have gone home. And Joseph and Mary are ready
to go home, too. But it does not work
out that way. An angel appears to Joseph in a dream and tells him to go
to Egypt instead. And the reason is that
Herod is looking for Jesus and wants to kill him.
Imagine that you’re Joseph or
Mary, and you hear this. What’s your reaction going to be?
I think mine would’ve been
confusion. I mean, here you are, the earthly parents of the Messiah, the
Savior. Just that, in and of itself, would be a pretty heavy
responsibility. And then, it turned out
that this Messiah, this Savior, was born in a barn a hundred miles from
home. Okay, that’s kind of strange.
You wonder why God would let things happen that way. But okay, we got through that. We’ve been in Bethlehem for a while. The census is over. We can go home and
get started raising this holy child the right way, or at least as best as we
can.
Except no. We cannot go
home. We’ve got to go...to Egypt? To a foreign country? A place where we don’t know anyone?
They may not have even spoken the language there. And we’ve got to go with nothing more than
what we can carry?
All that would’ve been enough
right there. But oh, by the way, the reason you’ve got to go there is
because King Herod wants to kill your son the Messiah. And if he has to
kill you to get to him, well, that’s no big deal to him. You’re not just going to a foreign country
with the Savior, you’re doing it on the run for your lives.
Your head would be spinning,
right? You mean God, the almighty God, is going to have you raise the
Savior, the Messiah, the one your people, the Jews, have been waiting for
forever, in a foreign country? How’s that gonna work? What are you supposed to do for housing
there? What are you supposed to use for
money? How are you even going to get
anything to eat?
I mean, this is crazy,
right? This makes no sense. But
your only alternative is to try to hide from Herod where you are, and you know
that’s not gonna work. Herod might be a ruthless dictator, but he’s very
thorough. He’s going to have his people going everywhere, house to house,
village to village, and all through the countryside as well. If you don’t
leave, Herod is going to find you. And
he’s going to kill Jesus, and probably you, too.
So, you go. But you have
to wondering, don’t you, what in the world God can be up to? After all,
this is the all-powerful God we’re talking about here. This is the one who arranged this whole
virgin birth thing in the first place. That God cannot protect the
Messiah from Herod’s soldiers? You have
to take him to Egypt instead?
Well, as little sense as it
makes to you, that seems to be the plan. So you go. You go to Egypt. And you’re glad you did, because Herod sure
enough would’ve killed Jesus if you’d stayed. He killed all the boys who
were two years old or less. What a
horror. Again, why did God not stop
that? Why did God allow all those
innocent children to be slaughtered? You don’t know. None of it makes any sense at all.
But you’re in Egypt, and you
make the best of it. You make your way, somehow, through all the hazards
and problems and pitfalls that come from living in a foreign country. And
you start to get used to it. You go
about raising the Savior as best you can.
Life starts to have a certain kind of normalcy to it after all. If
this is how it’s going to go, well, it could be worse.
Except it’s not going to go
that way at all. That normalcy you thought you were starting to
have? Forget it. The angel shows
up, and you can just imagine Joseph thinking “Not you again.” But it is
the angel again, and this time the message is that it’s time to go back home. And so, Joseph and Mary take Jesus on another
long, arduous trip. But they finally do get home. And since the Bible leaves the story there,
we assume that they finally were able to have a more or less normal life. That is, if it’s possible to have a normal
life when the child you’re raising is the Savior, the Messiah, the divine Son
of God.
The thing is, we do a
disservice to Joseph and Mary if we just stop the Christmas story with the baby
in the manger with shepherds and wise men around. That’s a nice,
peaceful, happy ending, but the years after that were anything but peaceful for
Joseph and Mary.
Think of the number of times
God deliberately turned their lives upside down. The first time, of
course, was just the circumstances of Mary’s pregnancy. We don’t know how many people Joseph and Mary
might have told about those circumstances, but it’s a pretty safe bet that
anyone they did tell was pretty skeptical at best. And then, having to
travel to Bethlehem with Mary almost ready to give birth. You can say that was not God’s fault, that
was because of the census, but still, God was the one who timed the birth to
come during the census. And then, when
they thought they could go home, they had to go to Egypt instead. And
then, just as they’re getting settled in Egypt, they have to hit the road
again, heading back to Egypt.
And notice, God did not give
Joseph and Mary any knowledge of what the overall plan was. When the
angel first appeared to Mary and then to Joseph, that angel never said anything
about a birth in a stable, or about a trip to Egypt, or anything else.
And when the angel told them to go to Egypt, the angel said nothing about how
long they might be there. It might have
been the rest of their lives for all Joseph and Mary knew. Joseph and
Mary were asked to do all these hard, almost impossible things, without any
clue about what the ultimate plan might be.
They just knew they were supposed to do something, and so they did it.
Have you had times when it felt
like your life was being turned upside down? I suspect you have. Most of us have, usually more than once. Just like Joseph and Mary, we’re going along
with our lives, thinking everything is fine, thinking we know how life is going
to go. Then, suddenly, something happens, and all of a sudden we don’t
have a clue how life’s going to go.
Then, just about the time it seems like we’ve gotten through the tough
time and things are getting back to normal, boom, our lives are turned
upside down again. And then we’re about through that, and bam, it
happens again.
Now, I’m not saying that every
time our lives get turned upside down it’s because God caused it.
Sometimes it’s the result of choices we make.
Sometimes it’s just the way circumstances work out, and we don’t know
why. But it happens to all of us at some point. Maybe you’re going through it now. If you’re not, the chances are you will at
some point.
So if it feels like your life
is upside down right now, or the next time it does feel that way, think about
where God might be in it. Because, you know, God can be in it even if God
did not cause it. Romans Eight,
Twenty-eight tells us that God can work all things for the good of those who
love him. So the chances are that, when our lives are being turned upside
down, God is in it somewhere.
Think about where God might
be. Think about why God might be allowing it to happen. Is there
something you’re supposed to do as a result of this? Is there somewhere
you’re supposed to go? Is there something
you’re supposed to learn? Is there someone you’re supposed to go to? Where might God be?
Joseph and Mary’s lives were
turned upside down, over and over again. But God was always with
them. They did not always understand,
but they trusted God. And God saw them through it all.
Our lives will get turned
upside down, too. Maybe over and over again. But God will be with us. We may not
always understand. But if you and I
trust God, God will see us through it all, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment