Mary Delivers Her Firstborn

Creation: A Divine Cycle
The Savior Has Been born

The Savior Has Been Born

Luke 2:5-7. The Message

The Birth of Jesus

2 1-5 About that time Caesar Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Empire. This was the first census when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Everyone had to travel to his own ancestral hometown to be accounted for. So Joseph went from the Galilean town of Nazareth up to Bethlehem in Judah, David’s town, for the census. As a descendant of David, he had to go there. He went with Mary, his fiancée, who was pregnant.
6-7 While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. She gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in a manger because there was no room in the hostel.

For Reflection

The fullness of time had arrived--God's time and Mary's time.  The event could not have been more inauspicious.  Although from the line of David, Christ was born as a traveler to poor parents rather than to the elite,  Christ was a first born son, entitled, but with little to inherit. Had he been born into a family of means, the innkeeper may have made room for them, but as they were poor, they had been turned away and offered only the stable. Mary, heavy with child, was not given common human decency that, had the innkeeper shown compassion, could have been offered.  Indeed, they would not have been on the road if it had not been for the Roman occupation's requirement to be counted so that taxes could be levied.

Here, then, in the story of the virgin birth is the Christ Event in a prescient form:  political and social unrest, lack of compassion among the people, a competition for souls between the human gods of vengeance and violence and the true God of forgiveness and peace. Both the lowly and the high placed are called to know and worship with a new vision of God. God's will for humanity is personified in Christ.

It is the overture for God's great symphony. God's intentions for humankind will be revealed among the variations of theme and form and in the multitude of melodies which have always existed, are present today and will continue to play beyond the end of time. Carried on the winds of beauty and grace is the music of truth in an everlasting crescendo building toward the Earthly realization of the Kingdom of God.

Halleluja!

Pray

Pray that you will sing God's melodies.  Pray that you will dance in God's rhythm.  Pray that you will play God's favorite instrument, yourself, with grace and humility.