Today Dee and I are planning a journey to her "ancestral" home of Herman, Minnesota for the celebration of Thanksgiving. It is a four-hour pilgrimage north to a small, west central farming community of less than 500 residents. It amazes me how relatively easy the journey can be. Fill up the tank in the Ford Explorer, plug in Three Dog Night's greatest hits album, grab a hot cup of coffee and a Casey's donut in Redwood Falls, and the next thing you know we are there, pulling into the long lane of my in-laws farmstead.
Journeys! Our lives are filled with journeys to places near and far. During the holiday season our hearts are kindled with the warm memories of journeys we have taken as families over the years.
I find it interesting that we begin our celebration of Christmas with a journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, two relatively tiny towns.
Mary and Joseph grew up in Nazareth, a town of maybe less than 200 at that time - a village in the shadow of the larger, cosmopolitan city of Sepphoris, a town of culture, shopping and prosperity.
Nazareth, on the other hand, was a little burg of farmers, shepherds and laborers who probably walked an hour each way to sell their goods and services in Sepphoris.
As I picture a place like Nazareth today, I think of Herman, Minnesota, and all the other tiny towns in rural America - towns without all the advantages of "big city" living. These are towns last on the list to get high-speed internet. These are places where honest, hard-working people live. This is what I imagine when I think of Mary's hometown.
So what must it have been like for Mary and Joseph to leave Nazareth and journey all the way to Bethlehem for the registration ordered by the Roman authorities? The journey had few convenient "pit stops" along the way. The road conditions were terrible and bandits could be encountered along the more remote stretches of highway.
Mary and Joseph were making a journey of faith. Their willingness to follow a star was the navigational system that brought them to a place of new beginnings. Not only did they begin a new family in a manger in Bethlehem, but they set their infant son, Jesus, on a path of new beginnings. His birth would set in motion a chain of events that would bring healing and salvation for all the nations.
But this great gift of Christmas began with a journey - a story of faith few could have imagined.
May God bless each of us this Christmas season with new adventures. May we go places in our heart that would more closely connect us to the grace of the infant king Jesus. May His Spirit be our guiding star that brings us from our "ancestral homes" to a new place - a place where God can use us to deliver hope to a new generation of people.
Merry Christmas!
Pastor Bob
