What's Still Normal this Christmas

I was always Mary. My brother was Joseph. And together we somehow pulled off our annual Christmas production for our family--complete with bleating sheep, an innkeeper, angels, and baby Jesus.

Those were the days of cassette tapes. One year, in preparation for our infamous Christmas pageant, my ingenious brother recorded silence. One minute and ten seconds into that silence, the innkeeper's voice suddenly announces, "We have no more room!"

For this to work, Mary and Joseph must stay right on cue.

My brother presses the "play" button. The production begins, while the tape plays silence. For precisely one minute and ten seconds of recorded silence, Mary and Joseph hear of Caesar Augustus's decree, pack their meager belongings, travel to Bethlehem--but not too fast--find an inn, and knock on the innkeeper's door.

Joseph's knock on the innkeeper's door must occur at exactly one minute and ten seconds after the scene opens. Everything must be timed perfectly, every prop in the right place, every line said accurately. Or all would be a failure.

Not too unlike the real Christmas story.

A young virgin must give birth to the Son of God--exactly when and how God promised.

"The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this," Isaiah prophesied (Isaiah 9:7).

And He did.

Caesar Augusts made a decree. A young couple traveled to Bethlehem. An innkeeper heard a knock on his door. The inn was full. And the promised Messiah was born in a stable.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts performed all these things. 

Right on cue.

"Nothing's normal!" I heard many times in March and April of this year.

Today, we've almost forgotten was normal was.

What's still normal this Christmas? God never changes.

His zeal accomplished the greatest story ever told.

His story for you and me is no different or less on His mind.

Today might feel like a long, one-minute-and-ten-seconds of silence.

But He hasn't changed.

He is performing His perfect plan for you and me.

Right on cue.

"When the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." (Galatians 4:4,5)

Photo by Sean Wells on Unsplash