Christmas Morning: Son Rise on a New Dayਨਮੂਨਾ

Football is a team sport. In order for any one play to work, everyone must do their part, not just the player who is scheduled to carry the ball. If everyone doesn’t move by design, the play is doomed to fail. Hardly any other sport requires this kind of coordinated precision. Everyone is playing a part, even if they are not getting the ball.

In Luke 2, Caesar Augustus called a census requiring all the residents of the Empire to travel to their ancestral homes to register. In a world without automobiles or airlines, this is quite the inconvenience! People had to travel to their family’s home base to be counted. Why did Caesar do this? Perhaps his motivation may have been to stroke his ego (look at how many people are in MY kingdom), or to line his pocketbook (taxes were tied to population). Whatever his motivation, the census was called, sending the world into motion.

But behind it all, God was at work. In Micah 5:2, it was prophesied that the Messiah would be born in the little town of Bethlehem. Trouble was, Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth, some 80 miles away! Nine months pregnant, this certainly would have been a difficult weeklong journey on foot. God used the required registration to move the pieces into place so that the prophecy could be fulfilled.

Think of it: thousands of people moving around, wondering why they were doing what they were doing. It turns out they were playing a team game. Though the “ball” was not coming to them, they still had a part to play in order to get the Messiah to the manger.

In our lives, we are tempted to interpret all world events in light of how they affect us. Sometimes, though, we are not getting the “ball.” Sometimes God is doing something else, and the key to understanding it is outside of ourselves, not inside. Of course, God can be at work in the world and in us simultaneously, but it is helpful to remember that we are not at the center of it all; He is.

Think about that the next time you are moving about, wondering why things are happening the way that they are. Know this, though: the Gift Mary delivered in Bethlehem was absolutely for you and me. Let’s trust Him together through all the events of our lives.