Advent
Meditation
December
8th
16.
Trapped by Circumstances
Luke
2:1-4 In those days Caesar
Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire
Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius
was governor of Syria .) And everyone
went to his 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.
Throughout
history there have been groups of people who have decided that life,
the world, is like a great clockwork machine and that everything is
interlinked and no one and nothing is free from it. It's like one great
machine and you can't affect it. Some have even gone as far as to say
everything we say or do is determined by what has been. We are locked
into a great machine, slaves to yesterday!
Now
why do we sometimes feel that? Because governments and authorities decide
the rules, the media portrays life as being a series of incidents where
so much of it goes wrong and we feel we have little or no say in the
destiny of the world. Joseph and Mary could have felt like that. They
are part of a small nation, Israel ,
which has been taken over and ruled by Rome
. Rome
is all-powerful and so, because the Roman emperor has decided he would
like to know exactly who he is ruling over, everyone has to be counted,
and they are to be counted at the place of their birth. So, all over
the country, people were moving to go to their home town to make sure
on census day they were there. There were no doubt severe penalties
for those who didn't! In the case of a married couple, they were to
go to the husband's home town.
So
here they are, expecting a baby – which Joseph, no doubt, isn't feeling
too sure about on a bad day – and now they have to travel from Nazareth
in the south to Bethlehem
in the north, because that's the town of
his family. Cogs in a machine, being driven by forces beyond them! Why
Bethlehem? What's
special about Bethlehem?
That will become clear later, but for the moment it seems there is little
point in it, except the emperor requires it. Isn't that just how life
is so much of the time? We seem carried along by the winds of circumstance
and we don't know why. We wish we could win a million pounds, say, and
break free from the daily drudgery and not have to work, perhaps, for
work can seem such a part of the ‘machine' which holds us in place.
In such a framework of thinking, it is so easy to feel depressed. What's
the point? Why am I here? Why is this happening? If only I hadn't… If
only I had…. Yes, there are days when it seems that that is all there
is.
It's
like what we were thinking about, in respect of Elizabeth and Zechariah,
a little while back. She's pregnant and it's going to be nine months
before anything is going to happen, so it's a waiting time. We've just
got to get on with life and wait for the next significant thing to happen.
For Mary and Joseph, it's having to be at Bethlehem.
Get the census out of the way and we can get on with life again. Oh
really? You don't know some of the things that are going to happen there,
because one thing we've forgotten about here, is that God has a plan
and God is on the move. That's so easy to forget in what seems the ordinary
mundane day to day working out of life. Oh yes, it may seem that ‘big
people' are moving us around like pawns on a chess board, but actually
God is the One who is ruling over it all. Don't lose sight of that today,
or tomorrow, or any other day! Look for Him in it. Remind yourself what
He has said or done to get you to today. Get perspective! Get a God
perspective, and that will change everything!
If
you wish to e-mail us any comment on this meditation please click here
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tony.thomas@rochfordcc.co.uk
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