I was listening to a podcast of Elevation Church and the sermon series they are walking through right now. Steven, their pastor, decided to go ahead and preach his Christmas sermon early in December so he was discussing the ins and outs of the night Jesus was born as well as the months that followed.
Christmas is such an interesting time because it is so meaningful to us as Christians. The commercialization of it means that lots of people also know the story. Most people attend church around Christmas, even if they don’t consider themselves very religious, it’s just part of their tradition. So, it can kinda get mundane and boring since we have heard it our whole lives. Plus there aren’t that many details in the bible so really, what else is there to learn?
In fact, it’s so familiar that it’s easy to forget that the people involved in the story didn’t know what we know now as it was happening to them. They had to take one step at a time, hoping that what they thought God was saying was actually what He was saying and that they weren’t making huge mistake after huge mistake as they went against conventional wisdom and probably looked crazy to those around them.
I mean can you imagine what your parents would say if you told them you were actually still a virgin but also you were pregnant? What about if you told them you were going to still marry someone who wasn’t pregnant when you proposed but she was now and she was claiming that she hadn’t slept with anyone. Like pretend you were actually going to call your parents up and tell them that. It didn’t make anymore sense to the people in Mary and Joseph’s life than it would today. The people around them hadn’t had messages from Angels and didn’t know what God was doing.
Mary and Joseph didn’t really know too many details either so they couldn’t just share all the info and convince people around them that they weren’t crazy. As Steven says in his sermon, they were kept in the dark.
Don’t you think that even after this crazy thing happens where she miraculously gets pregnant, that Mary still has a plan of how this will play out. She plans to deliver about this time and in this place with these people there to help her. Then the baby will be presented to this temple on this day as is custom, and we will live in this house in this town with our family and friends, he will go to this synagogue and be trained, etc etc. Spoiler Alert: none of that happened.
Unmet expectations carry a lot of disappointment and grief. I’m sure just about everyone in this story experienced the grief and confusion of unmet expectations. Both sets of parents who weren’t going to get to throw the happy celebratory wedding that they had planned since their children were born. Mary and Joseph as the joy of being newlyweds was changed to people’s judgmental stares as they walked through the market. These are things that happen before Jesus is even born.
So then, we know Jesus is born in a stable in Bethlehem and is still living there when the Wisemen show up. We don’t think he is still a newborn since Herod kills all boys 2 and under but maybe he used that number as a guesstimate and maybe the Wisemen left their homes before Jesus was born. Whatever the case, they haven’t left Bethlehem in order to go back home and some time has passed. Maybe grandmas didn’t care back then but how do you think they felt when Mary and Joseph and that new baby grandson didn’t show back up at home and wasn’t there for his first passover etc? Every where you turn in this story before the Wisemen show up, there is unmet expectations. So many reasons to complain about life not living up to what it was supposed to be. There’s a whole lesson in that but what I really want to talk about today hits Mary and Joseph after the Wisemen enter the story.
It feels like you know, things haven’t gone a planned and their reputations have been under attack and Mary had to travel miles to a strange town and give birth for he first time with no women there to help her in a smelly freezing barn and put her first brand new baby on hay that animals have been eating from, but they have survived it all and found a place to live and have kinda started to put the pieces back together when something happens that brings real terror and grief. Herod wants their son dead. That’s hard for us to comprehend because most of us have never lived in a place where someone could send soldiers to your house in the middle of the night, grab your baby from your arms and kill it. But they knew Herod could and would do that.
All of sudden, everything that they thought they had and the control they thought they maintained were ripped from them and they were running through the dessert in the middle of the night to the nation that they celebrated freedom from every year. Like can you imagine celebrating how God miraculously saved your people from the evil slavery in Egypt every year at passover and then an Angle shows up in a dream telling you to run back there? Just get out of here as fast as you can, in the middle of the darkness and run. I can imagine the confusion of feeling like, God, You did this. You put this boy in our lives and You’re the reason we live in this town away from family, etc. We feel like we have surrendered to Your plan and have done what You wanted us to do and now our lives and mainly the life of this little boy we love so much are in jeopardy. What are you doing? Did I hear You right? AM I making this up? Was that dream real? Like it applies to my real life? Like I’m supposed to wake up right now, not sleep on it, not pray about it, just grab everything and leave? There had to have been many tears as their little family headed off for a very dangerous journey in the dark of night.
It’s easy to skip over the sadness and fear and grief present in this story when we read it from the place of knowing the end. We know the prophecies that were to be fulfilled through all of these unplanned or scary twists and turns, but Mary and Joseph didn’t. God did not tell them what all would happen along the journey or after, He just said, jump up and go, knowing that I will go before you.
This Christmas season, these are the feelings that I imagine Mary and Joseph felt, that I resonate the most with. Maybe you are in a season of both unmet expectations and deep hurt and pain as what you thought was God’s leading has lead you to be running for your life through the darkest valley. In his sermon, Steven says when it is you in the valley, it can feel like the valley is your new mailing address. It can feel like, you are never getting out of there.
I can’t find an example in the bible of a person who was walking through a dark valley and God showed them every step they would take to climb out and how it would all end. He is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, not a sun to our night, not yet. He doesn’t brighten every crevice of our circumstances and show us everything that will happen. He asks us to trust Him as we walk through the night, only knowing what the next step is.
We know that in our heads I think. I have heard it many times and definitely have that psalm memorized about the light for my path. But it gets trickier to live out when the step He wants you to take doesn’t make sense to anyone around you. And you don’t have the answer on how it will all turn out in the end. It’s tricky to wait when everyone feels like you should be moving but God hasn’t shown you what step to take next and all that’s out in front of you is a dark black void. It’s hard when there is so much grief and confusion mixed in with how you even got to this dark valley in the first place. When you were trying so hard to walk in obedience and you end up in a black hole with seemingly no way out, it’s hard to keep trusting. The grief can be isolating and suffocating.
I have been there very recently and don’t know that I’m completely out of it yet but if you are there with me, know that we aren’t alone. The very people who were tasked with raising Jesus had to trust Him during extremely dark and difficult paths, not knowing what would happen and surrounded by disappointment and grief.
Thanks be to God whose whole point in sending that baby was to step into our grief and help us on this journey. We have a Jesus who understands on every level and knows how deep the feelings run. He knows and gives strength to either wait or take the next step. He is always faithful to provide at the right time and in the perfect way.
I’m still learning to trust that more completely and totally give my life to that truth. In what ways is Jesus asking you to trust Him more deeply? What grief is He asking you to walk through? He is trustworthy.
Your Fellow Traveler
lacey
Find True Joy 