This is a personal reflection of today’s Advent devotion from Great News for Great Joy (download for free now from Desiring God). Please also share your reflections in the comments area.
I’m continually amazed at the ways God will take seemingly insignificant moments or things and turn them into something spectacular. I can name many times in my own life where, as events unfolded, I was witness to God using the “unusable” for a higher purpose in his kingdom.
This is no more true than when considering the birth of Jesus and the days leading to it. Think about how something so worldly and drab as a census could be the very thing that leads Joseph and Mary the Bethlehem where our Savior is to be born. Consider it in the context of how they were going to this place to be counted as part of an earthly kingdom and it is the arrival place of the one true king who already knows us by name!
As if that were not poetic enough, the name Bethlehem means “house of bread” because in Old Testament times, the area was a highly productive area for grain cultivation. Seems like to fitting a place for the birth of a baby who would go on to break bread at the Last Supper and be known to go against the “grain” of our world.