Pregnancy is weird. The simple fact that a tiny human is formed from a moment of … well …*boomboom (*see last week’s message for reference), is absolutely mind blowing. Our most vulnerable and intimate moment is the one thing that produces the greatest creation. How interestingly profound and certainly no coincidence. Then, that tiny human is formed inside the guts of a woman, turning nothing into something. This is beyond belief. Finally, add the physiological changes a woman’s body goes through in that process from start to finish leaves no doubt in my little brain there is a Master Creator, and this Entity is so far beyond me!
I remember the awkwardness and discomfort Ashly felt as our children were incubating and growing inside of her. Although she rocked pregnancy and worked all the way up until each of our babies were born, towards the end, everything was more challenging. Simple tasks like putting on socks and standing up from sitting were arduous feats.
Traveling was out of the question for her in the latter part of the curation process so I was on a mission trip with students without her the week before our second was born. She was calling and texting in the middle of that trip saying that I better get my butt home if I knew what was good for me. (She didn’t say it that way but I heard it.) I checked into flights, weighed my options, looked at my opportunity costs and…well… thankfully Aaron didn’t arrive until AFTER I got back from the mission trip with the group. (I know…what an idiot move!)
With our first, Ashly was such a beast, but in a good way. She rocked full time nursing with 12+ hour shifts up until d-day. She even slept outside once and another night on the floor for a youth event at 6 months pregnant!!! That didn’t mean there wasn’t a struggle, and I can assure you that she would NOT have been happy if I would have told her to get packed because we were going on a vacation, but she would have to ride donkey-back for 80 miles! YIKES!
Not only did Mary have to ride on a donkey while pregnant, traveling 80 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem, but she did it when she was 9 months pregnant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good thing she was highly favored by God or that donkey could have jostled and shook that baby right out of Mary on the side of the road. And AAA wouldn’t have been any help.
So, here we have a pregnant teenager making an ill-advised trip with a near full-term baby inside, where medical care is archaic and minimal. And it’s not like Joseph skills with a hand saw would help if Mary’s water broke en route (or would it). He was used to working with wood, not placenta juice. This was most certainly a catastrophe in the making.
But the crazy thing and most vivid evidence that this was certainly divine orchestration is that hundreds of years earlier, men of God shared prophecies about what God was going to be doing. This trip created the fulfillment of that prophecy.
A prophet named Micah told everyone that out of Bethlehem (the smallest town in the nation of Judah) would come a ruler who would lead and care for his people and bring peace! (Micah 5) And this ruler would save his people!
Imagine if you heard about a promise of something so great, so grandiose, and so life changing, but always only as a story from your grandparents. They spoke of an event that would take place one day, some day, and all you could do was wait and hope. But then, it happens, just like has been talked about, you have no choice but to believe and be forever changed!
The nativity became a sign of much more than just a baby but a present reality of a transformative change! And what could have easily been another tragedy and foolish catastrophe instead has become the greatest story ever told and yet is still being written. It’s the same for you and me. Would you let Jesus and this little Christmas scene elevate your mind, enhance your reality, and empower your future??!!
#SaveAHorseRideADonkey
#CatastropheToTheNativity
#RestoringWholenessOfLife
Brett
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