“But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God.You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.” Luke 1:30.

Illustration from Masahiro Kasuya’s children’s book “The Way Christmas Came”

“And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.” Luke 2:3-5

Everything had gone wrong. Like pregnant women in Gaza, or Sudan, displaced at the riskiest moment, Mary was forced  to travel to Bethlehem at the end of her pregnancy. Scripture knows nothing of a donkey for Mary to ride, rather they would have walked at the slow sluggish pace of Mary’s  late pregnancy.  The news of a  census demanding everyone be registered, at their ancestral home,  could not have come at a worse time. 

Arriving in Bethlehem, they were faced with the reality, that whatever rooms, might have been available to them, were already taken. There was simply no place to stay.

No room, anywhere. Mary and Joseph must have felt like God had deserted them, as they knocked on door after door,  searching for a place to stay. What desperation and fear Mary  would have felt, when she was  counting on a room, a space to stay, a good place for their baby to be born.  Angel promises were all well and good,  but with Mary’s  increasing labor pains, along with  rejection at every door, the angels words are a distant memory.

How often it has seemed that way for us. God seems distant, our world darkened, promises that have sustained us, empty. But just at that moment, when we cease to believe God cares, God breaks into our lives and we discover that God has been working guiding us, and others around us, all the time. Even as God provided for Mary and Joseph, when life seemed darkest, God is at work, preparing a way for us, in our dark and painful moments.

So it was for Mary and Joseph, finding their way to a place and person, who seeing the  turmoil on their faces, offered them a stable to stay in. Shelter was found, certainly not their choice of accommodations.  But it came with  a degree of privacy and warmth.

There the Christ child is born. God’s answer to power and privilege arrives in a humble stable, and is laid in a hay filled manger.

Additional Advent and Christmas  Devotions can be found at:    Devotions for Advent to Epiphany