The Birth of Jesus

Happy Christmas Eve!

We’ve finally arrived at the moment we’ve been waiting for! All of the Old Testament has been leading to this moment. In fact, all of human history was leading to this moment! Our world was always in need of a savior, and that savior came as a baby in the story we will read today. Before you read, consider the longing for salvation that the people of God had felt for centuries, and the sheer joy that Mary and Joseph experienced at the birth of their son, and the coming of their Savior.

STUDY THE SCRIPTURE

Click here to access the reading from Luke 2:1-7

REFLECTION

A Promise Kept

by Kelsey Bacon

Sometimes, the simplicity and straightforwardness of the Bible baffles and astounds me. The way that Luke writes about this story seems so simple, so matter of fact. In seven short sentences, we have a savior. Now of course, all the things that happened leading up to his birth were told in detail in the previous chapter, but it seems like this story deserves more than seven sentences, or at least, I want to know more.

It’s not hard to put myself in Mary’s shoes. Although I’ve never given birth, I do know what it’s like to be afraid. I do know what it’s like to be nervous, to feel unprepared. We don’t know for certain that Mary felt these things as they arrived in Bethlehem and found no room at the inn, but I think it’s a pretty good guess. She was about to give birth, as a teenager, to the Son of God. She was away from her family, from her friends, in a strange town, and she didn’t even have a proper place to give birth or to lay her newborn down to sleep. All Mary had was Joseph there to hold her hand, and the promise she’d received from the angel months ago—the promise that this child was the Son of God, the King of Kings, the savior of the whole world.

Sometimes I wish the Bible went into these details, but then again, there is beauty in the simplicity of this story. There is beauty in the strange and humble way that Jesus was brought into this world. There is beauty in our ability to imagine Mary and Joseph’s perspectives. Because even if the story is told in great detail or in seven simple sentences, the promise is still the same. Jesus is here, Jesus is King, Jesus saves.

UALC’S CAMPAIGN OF PRAYER

THURSDAY: LIFE - Lord God Almighty, we lament the current distress of our nation and we ask for your intervention. We implore you that every precious life would be protected – lives of minorities, lives of the unborn, lives of the hopeless, lives of the mentally ill, lives with deep roots in this land, lives who have recently arrived -- each and every precious life for whom You gave Your precious life.