In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.
Luke 2.1-5
Have you ever thought what an amazing thing it is that God ordained beforehand that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (as the prophecy in Micah 5 shows); and that he so ordained things that when the time came, the Messiah's mother and legal father were living in Nazareth; and that in order to fulfill his word and bring two insignificant people to Bethlehem that first Christmas, God put in the heart of Caesar Augustus that all the Roman world should be enrolled, each in his own town?
Have you ever felt, like me, ordinary and insignificant in a world of seven billion people, where all the news is of big political and economic and social movements and of outstanding people with lots of power and prestige?
If you have, don't let that make you disheartened or unhappy. For it is implicit in Scripture that all the mammoth political forces and all the giant industrial complexes, without their even knowing it, are being guided by God, not for their own sake but for the sake of God's ordinary people-the ordinary Mary and the ordinary Joseph who have to be moved from Nazareth to Bethlehem. God wields an empire to bless his children.
Do not think, because you experience adversity, that the hand of the Lord is shortened. It is not our prosperity but our holiness that he seeks with all his heart. And to that end, he rules the whole world. He is a big God for ordinary people, and we have great cause to rejoice that, our heavenly Father is above and beyond all the kings and presidents and premiers and chancellors of the world.
This is a excerpt from 'Joy to the World-Daily Readings for Advent' by John Piper.
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