Christmas Eve

Our Advent Calendar

  It's Christmas Eve.

  The majority of Christmas dinner is resting in the refrigerator, waiting to be cooked    tomorrow.  The turkey is brining away in its bath of salt and spices.  All the presents    are wrapped.

  On this day my Labor and Delivery nurse mind always turns to the birth of our       Lord.  Not the miraculous fact of His birth to a virgin.  Not the miraculous fact of     His  choosing to become a baby to live a sinless life and die as a sacrifice for our   sins. (Although, I do think about those things at Christmas.) But today, I have   thoughts about the actual physical birth.

In my 46-year career, I have witnessed over 4,000 births. But I know little about the one I would have loved to have witnessed. I have questions.

Was Mary already in labor when they began their travel to Bethlehem to pay taxes?  Did the walking and perhaps riding some on a donkey make the pain worse?  What would have been her response when her water broke?  Who, if anyone, was with Mary and Joseph when the baby Jesus made His appearance? Did they know what to do, or did they just "wing it"?

What was Mary's response to the realization she was going to give birth in a barn? Was the whole experience so overwhelming that the "where" no longer mattered?

I don't know the answer to any of these questions, and I would never even begin to speculate about one of the holiest events in the history of mankind.  But I do know this.  Whatever the situations Mary and Joseph went through, God the Father was leading them.  God the Father was protecting them.  He was preparing them for what would happen next.  They were carrying His Son to the place where He would make His appearance as a member of the human race.  There is nothing that could have prevented that from happening.  

It is no different for us as Christians today.  We, too, carry God in us.  If we have trusted in the Lord Jesus as our Savior, His Spirit indwells us.  He leads us.  He protects us, and He prepares us for what we will experience next.

Just as Mary and Joseph trusted in the leading and guiding of the Holy Spirit on that first Christmas night, we, too, can trust Him in the nights of our lives.

"But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, 
if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." 
Romans 8:9

"If God be for us, who can be against us?"
Romans 8:31