Breathless wonderment

I find it amazing to think that there is nothing God can't control to fulfill His purpose.

You are probably thinking, "Yes.... This is news to you?"

Well,... no I understand He can do anything but it still blows me away.

It was His will that His son would be born in Bethlehem in a stable and the way He made that happen is nothing less than breathtaking.

Mary and Joseph were from Nazareth and so its likely that without intervention that's where Jesus would've been born. But Bethlehem, which means "house of bread" is where God wanted Him to be born and He wanted Him to be born in a stable.

For that to happen (and to generalize scandalously) certain conditions needed to exist. There needed to be a foreign dictator in charge of Israel that wanted a census of his empire and no room at the Inn.

Lets talk about one of the greatest empires the world has ever seen. No, I'm not talking about McDonalds but Imperial Rome.

Did God direct Hannibal Hamilcar to take his Carthaginian army over the alps into Rome? Because the ensuing war with Rome which eventually ended in defeat for Carthage gave Rome the confidence to look outward and conquer the majority of the known world.

After that Rome grew in power and gobbled up territory but she was a republic and had many controls in place to keep her safe from dictatorships. Until one man named Julius Caesar took control and placed himself at the helm.

Julius Caesar was, of course, famously betrayed by Mark Antony, Cassius and his friend Brutus. But Caesar left a will in which he declared Octavian to be his heir and Octavian became Emperor of Rome. Octavian is better known by his preferred title Augustus or "Revered one". Caesar Augustus established a civil service which then took a census of the entire Roman world.

And then this meant Mary and Joseph had to travel to their ancestral town of Bethlehem.

Pretty cool I think.

Oh yeah and the Holy Spirit also caused the virgin Mary to conceive. That may have been one of the reasons she and Joseph were denied a room anywhere in Bethlehem. Its unlikely that anyone would try too hard to find a room for a pregnant unmarried woman at that time. But that was all part of God's plan. He wanted His Son to be born in a lowly stable. Maybe because to the One who was involved in the creation of the universe there would be no difference between a stable and what you and I perceive as the greatest house on earth.

Neither could claim to be worthy of His presence.

But if I was Mary I might still wonder if there could've been a plan that didn't involve travelling 140km when I was nine months pregnant.