Mary And Joseph Had No Idea, Yet There They Went

​I have some very challenging childhood memories. But, I also have some that are beautiful and full of life and hope.

At the top of the list of the more beautiful memories are those of Christmases past. As I reflect on that this morning, I think it's possible I've spent a lot of my life trying to live again some of those Christmas seasons of yesterday. And maybe wrestled with some resentment in different ways for how long gone they are.

I don't know.

But in my mind the Christmas season always starts today, the first day of December. I don't know if that means it's the right day to put up a tree or hang lights or start sending out those cards, I just know as a kid something always felt magical about saying it's now December.

It's been a long time since it felt as magical as kid kind of magic, which often leaves me disappointed with December. It leaves me sometimes anxious for it to all be over.

It makes me miss Christmas. Miss it, as in where did it go? And MISS it, as in why did it have to go?

So this Christmas, I'm going to do what I do with these inner wrestlings of mine. I'm going to write. Each day I'll write something about this Christmas season that speaks to me all the way up to that glorious morning when Jesus first speaks to each of us.

A babe crying out from a manger.

I don't know what I want to come from these writings. Maybe it's as simple as me making sure that I don't miss the cry of that baby this year. And I think that will be enough.

But if along the way I draw some Christmas spirit into your life that will be great too. If this year you hear the cry that sings out from Bethlehem on Christmas morning as just a little more precious, then that's the greatest Christmas card I could ever send out.

And so this morning, as we begin this Christmas journey together, I can't help but wonder what Mary and Joseph felt as they began their journey together on the way to Bethlehem. Could they have even imagined that some two thousand years later, a man, wrestling with his own memories of what their journey would come to mean, would sit here writing about it?

About their child?

That the mere thought of that would bring him goosebumps and hints of tears?

And what in God's name - (pun intended) - were Mary and Joseph wrestling with on that first ever journey to Christmas? This young girl with a child to be born from no man she'd ever been with, and this man chosen to be father to a child that could not be explained outside the words of an angel.

Like really, and I'm wrestling with MY Christmas journey?

Yet, there they went. On the journey. And maybe that is part of this December First beginning of our own Christmas journey that should not be overlooked - yet there they went.

Because I am not the only one who wrestles with this season, who wrestles with demons of his past - whether they be Christmas demons or quite simply just nasty old demons.

And yet God, in his endless love for me, in his refusal to see my demons as even the slightest hint of a reflection of the me he created, created in my own manger scene, calls me toward the one he calls his son.

And can you feel this? Because you need to. All the way there, all the way from December First to Christmas Day, all the way from where you are to that manger in Bethlehem for your first glimpse of God's chosen child, God also chooses to call you and me his children.

There can be no better starting place on our own journey to Bethlehem. Feeling ourselves as God's chosen children on the way to receive God's only begotten son.

It is not enough to know that, we must feel it.

Because that is the feeling most worth carrying on our way there. On our way to Christmas.

Mary didn't choose to be the mother of Jesus. Joseph didn't choose to be his father. And you and I did not choose to have Jesus as our eternal brother. God chose that all FOR us.

Yet, without God, would we have ever chosen anything more beautiful and hopeful for our lives?

Is there a Christmas memory more meaningful?

I don't think so. I don't think there's a more beautiful memory with which to begin this 2024 Christmas journey.

Mary and Joseph, yet there they went.

You and me, yet here we go.