God doesn't wait for space to be made.
God arrives in the middle of tired, stressed, ordinary, surviving, day-to-day lives. I love it.
It’s just under a week before Christmas.
Mary and Joseph are travelling from Nazareth to Bethlehem.
Roughly 100 miles, depending on the route. On foot. (possibly with a donkey, although no reference to a donkey is made). A journey of about 11 days, so they’ve almost certainly already set off…
The academics suggest they avoided Samaria and took the longer, safer route down through the Jezreel Valley, along the Jordan Valley, then climbing again into the hills of Judea.
(L-R) Nazareth > The Road Out > The Jordan Valley > Scythopolis > Jericho > The Judean Hills > Bethlehem
It will not have been a neat, polished pilgrimage, one can book the nativity trail and do the same walk - this sounds incredible by the way:
It would have been a slow, dusty, tiring walk marked by all those things long journeys like this would entail; the excitement, fear, hope...and the quiet, growing awareness that something irreversible was happening. All whilst trying to get to Bethlehem to register for Augustus' census.
Our nativity illustrations often show Mary and Joseph travelling alone:
I expect there was actually all sorts of people travelling back and forth as they reach their ancestral home, and Joseph, as a descendent of King David was heading back to his. They would have seen wide open valleys, rivers, market towns, shepherds, Roman roads and soldiers as they travelled:
I found the following article from 2008 tucked away on the BBC News Website. The diary is well worth a read. And of course it's almost impossible to look at these maps, see these pictures, read these words and not think of the human tragedy of conflict and bloodshed that continues.
I can't imagine that Mary and Joseph considered, at the time, there was anything overtly 'holy' in this journey. It was really hard work, and yet Mary and Joseph were utterly enveloped in God's presence.
A week before Christmas we're all on those final days of Advent and marching towards the end of term, the final shopping trip, getting our houses ready, gathering with friends...Actually, our house this week has felt 'full' as we welcomed people into our home to mark the season.
Luke 2:7 (NRSVue): 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in the guest room.
Mary and Joseph weren't turned away from the inn because people were cruel, but because normal, everyday, busy, full life was carrying on.
I love it. I love this reality in the stories we read and hear and reflect upon. God doesn't wait for space to be made, God arrives anyway. He's relentlessly unstoppable. He's unconcerned by a free gap in our days or a 'light week' and a perfectly prepared guest room. Instead, God arrives in the middle of tired, stressed, ordinary, surviving, day-to-day lives.
So perhaps in this final 'march' towards Christmas we shouldn't even think about doing more. There's already enough happening, but we can try and notice the tiredness and be gentle with it and the joy that comes when we pause, just for a breath and take a look around us.
The God of Christmas is not waiting for us to arrive somewhere better, and like Mary and Joseph we're not walking alone. Let's travel gently.
