So despite the train wreck of a year, my wife and I celebrated 25 years of marriage. Quite an accomplishment these days, and I would do it all over again if given the opportunity. As with all marriages, there are ups and downs and it is work, but easier when you’ve married your soul mate.
To share the same faith also makes a marriage a truly loving one. Mary and Joseph were both divinely informed of their part in God’s plan, and yet both expressed some form of hesitation. Both were faithful and Jesus was born in what seemed like an impossible, and an undesirable situation. Being miles from home in a little nothing of a town, and no place to stay, had to be unnerving for the young couple.
Yet we need to remember that it was all in God’s perfect timing, God’s perfect place, and God’s perfect provision. To prophetically fulfill all that was told by the prophets, Jesus had to be born in Bethlehem. He had to be born humbly, lowly in a manger God provided. All in love, Mary and Joseph trusted each other and, more importantly, they trusted in God to bring His Son, the Christ into the world to save us.
Luke 2:1-7 – In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
