Christmas Story Realities

[martincisneros]

I got to thinking about trying to tell a guy that God's responsible for a pregnancy and his first reaction "so you thought it was God, or a god, huh?!!!!" And then taxation time and having to report to the town of the man's birth for the census. A woman that's about 8+ months pregnant having to ride a donkey across rough terrain. Getting there and there being absolutely no room in the inn, and having to explain to his wife that there's this barn over here that's available for having her kid.

The look on her face that every guy knows that's ever had a girlfriend for either one month or a wife for at least one month at any time in their lives. He drug her across country on a donkey with no built-in shocks, very cool desert evenings, and having nowhere to stay but around a bunch of moos and bahs and all of the accompanying smells of those sounds! Yet when things were at their worst and they had to feel the most God forsaken, "God-with-us" could not have been closer!

And then to add agony to all of the degrading insults of their trip, here come the labor pains with no medication, and when emotions had to be at their rawest with all that had lead up to this, they were actually in the place of the introduction of the Baby that would change the world. When Joseph had to feel the loneliest and the most helpless with his suffering wife, again, God could not have been closer to them and in a more intimate setting with them.

When their arranged marriage had to seem like the worst possible deal (Hell!!) for both of them, again, God could not have been closer with them. Even to the present day, when an arranged etre marriage could not have been more inconvenient, more lonely, and more like a curse, Christmas is a reminder that God could not be any closer than He already is.