Reading Plan:
Luke 2:1-7
Our Thoughts:
Bart’s story didn’t begin as a happy one. His mother abandoned him at the age of three, leaving Bart with his abusive, alcoholic father. For the next 15 years, Bart lived with an intense fear of the next violent outburst. It wasn’t until his father was dying that the two reconciled their broken relationship and found God. Together they found mercy and forgiveness. It took a difficult 18-year journey that changed not only the trajectory of a father and son’s relationship but also impacted countless people around the world.
Our path as believers isn’t smoothed with convenience, comfort, or luxury. A Christian’s walk demands a life of suffering. In Luke 1, we join Mary and Joseph in their challenging journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Though Luke doesn’t speak to the specific details or route of the Holy Family’s trek to the City of David, we can study the political, religious, and physical landscape and imagine the difficulties they faced.
Joseph is under pressure in the months before Jesus’s birth. He provides for Mary’s financial needs while likely buffering daily gossip, speculation, shame, and judgment of Mary being an unwed mother, a situation that warranted execution by stoning. Now, Joseph must safely plan a grueling trip through the Judean desert in the final weeks of Mary’s pregnancy (Luke 2:1-4). The punishing 90-mile trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem due to Caesar Augustus’ new census law would also include the financial burden of paying taxes.
From Nazareth to the Jezreel Valley, the first leg of their 14-day journey is the easiest and most scenic. The Jezreel Valley is a lush fertile plain filled with wheat fields, fruit orchards, farmlands, including rows and rows of majestic olive trees brimming with ripe fruit. After another 50 miles to Shechem, they refill their wineskins, likely from the cool waters from Jacob’s Well—the same well Jesus witnesses to the Samaritan woman 33 years later (John 4:4-26).
Crossing the Judean desert is the most difficult part of their journey, an arid region of extreme temperatures, low sandstone hills, and rocky plains. For twenty arduous miles of roller coaster trekking, they hike canyons, craggy peaks, craters, and rock-strewn plateaus. Joseph and Mary continue to head south with the constant threat of criminals and wild animals.
When they arrive in Korazim Plateau, the panoramic beauty welcomes the couple: the architectural splendor of Solomon’s temple, stone roads, markets, government buildings with the salty aroma of the Galilean Sea nearby. The northern hillside where they took in Jerusalem’s magnificence is possibly near where Jesus gave his landmark Beatitudes sermon in Matthew 5. When the journey finally comes to an end five miles later in Bethlehem, we see the familiar silhouette of Mary on a donkey and Joseph holding the reigns as they come into town.
The circumstances surrounding Jesus’s birth are difficult, dirty, lonely, and humble. Jesus is born in filth and to shamefully unmarried parents. No one can empathize with our shame more than Jesus.
Mary doesn’t have the luxury of giving birth in a bed with a midwife and soft blankets in a nearby crib. Rather, she gives birth on a stable floor. Mary and Joseph swaddle Jesus in strips of cloth used to wrap the newborn lambs who would later be sacrificed at the temple. Jesus was born to be the sacrificial lamb. He is placed in a manger, a feeding trough for animals, symbolic of our need to bow before him and seek his life-giving nourishment until it is woven into the very fabric of our being (Luke 2:7). Nothing about the nativity is a coincidence. Every part of Jesus’s birth story is an intentional message that God favors the marginalized.
Fast-forward to Bart, now a young adult, standing in a somber funeral home in Texas in 1991. Bart Millard reels from the pain of losing his father—the monster of his childhood who had transformed into a loving, Christ-like man by the grace of God. In those moments of heartache, Bart’s grandmother leans into Bart and whispers, “I can only imagine what he’s seeing up there.” I can only imagine… Those few words opened a door for healing and courage to share his testimony with millions through a song with his band, Mercy Me, an autobiography, and ultimately a movie. Bart’s willingness to share his story helped lead others to healing and faith through Jesus. By sharing the good and the bad parts of our faith journeys, we share hope with the hopeless. Without the true story of Jesus’s birth, life, death, and resurrection—the Gospel—no one can hope or imagine eternity with Him. Who will you share your story with today?
More Questions:
• Am I like the Holy Family, willing to accept God’s calling at great personal sacrifice? If there’s hesitancy, fear, or outright inconvenience, how can I work on having faith like the Holy family?
• How often do I kneel before Jesus’s symbolic manger and feed at his table?
Prayer:
Father, thank you for the difficult journeys you have placed before me, because I know you are transforming my heart to be more Christ-like, and you are preparing me for greater blessings. Order my steps according to your will. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Author: Nikki Payton