Calmer Christmas Devotions 1-3

On a new toll-free recorded message center (877-470-1910) for the church I serve I am making available 24 personally-written daily Advent Devotions as part of a "Calmer Way to Christmas" series. Each of the first 20 of these 24 devotions is based on verses from the Gospel of Luke's version of the Christmas story. During this Advent Season I've decided to suspend my normal devotional practice and post these my Advent devotions instead. However, since I just made this decision today, you're a little behind. So today I will post the first 3 of these devotions, one for each of the first 3 verses from Chapter 2 of the Gospel of Luke. Starting tomorrow there will simply be one devotion posted each day.

Luke 2:1
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.

Last night I went to a seventh-grade girls basketball game in which our daughter played. Our team played hard, but clearly the other team had more experience and skill. The final score of 46 to 11 pretty much put an exclamation point on that fact.

As humans, we LOVE to keep score, don’t we. We love to have some tangible means of measuring success, so much so that often we make up little scores of our own. We size up each other’s cars and living arrangements, take note of who has accomplished what by the time of each high school reunion, and otherwise endeavor to know each other’s pecking order in life.

This is essentially why Emperor Augustus decreed that all the world should be registered. He was ordering a census, but this census was about more than mere curiosity. Augustus wanted to keep score in terms of the size of his kingdom and his realm of influence. Perhaps he wondered if his kingdom was 4 times the size of other kingdoms.

But as he was about to discover, outward scores don’t always tell the whole story. People driving modest cars or living in quite basic accommodations sometimes have more money in the bank than some people who appear to be living more luxuriously but are actually perilously close to foreclosure. In the case of last night’s basketball game, the final score doesn’t reflect the possibility that one or more of our girls, perhaps even one coming off the bench, may have played the best game of her life.

And Emperor Augustus? Well, he may have had the power to order a Census, but consider this. Once the census was all said and done, history records very little about the person who ordered the counting, yet devotes an entire New Testament to tell the amazing story of one of the people he counted.

The calmer way to Christmas takes to heart the fact that life is not so much about trying to prove that we’ve won but rather, to acknowledge that we’ve been won over by the story of the Christ Child who counts most of all.

Luke 2:2
This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.

I’ve been a pastor now for over 20 years and have been blessed to serve in three different congregations. What I think is interesting is that congregations tend to keep track of their respective histories by who was pastor at the time. People will say something to the affect of, “well, we built this or started doing that when pastor so and so was here.” It’s a way of marking time.

We do the same thing as a country in terms of presidents. Mention Cuban Missile Crisis and we all think of John F. Kennedy. Mention Watergate and we think of Richard Nixen. Mention Iranian Hostage Crisis and we think of Jimmy Carter. End of Cold War? Ronald Regan. It’s a way of marking time.

Sometimes the Bible marks time in much the same way. The Bible says that first census of those days took place while a fella named Quirinius was the governer of Syria. That probably doesn’t mean much to most of us these days, but it is a way of marking time. A way of saying that this story that Scripture is about to unfold really happened at a particular time and in a particular place on this very earth that serves as our home.

The calmer way to Christmas takes to heart the fact that we needn’t get overly concerned with little details of the moment. By the grace of God we are part of a much larger story covering centuries of time that all started when a fella that we otherwise would never heard of was Governer of Syria.

Luke 2:3
All went to their own towns to be registered.

We’ve spent a couple days reflecting on ancient leaders (like Augustus and Quirinius) who thought they were big shots in their day but really weren’t in the greater scheme of things. That’s true. But it’s also true that leaders, whether for good or ill, can change the common person’s everyday life with the stroke of a pen.

When Emperor Augustus ordered the census, that meant that thousands of people had to take the time and effort to accommodate his command. For those who never moved away from the place of their upbringing, this may have been no big deal. For others the command would require a trip back home.

A trip back home can conjure up all sorts of feelings. Some might see it as wonderful opportunity to catch up again with family and friends. For others a trip back home might bring up feelings of dread. Perhaps the thought of home brings up painful child-hood memories of a place where it was hard to fit in or where our experiences were not always the best. Maybe we are no longer the same as we were back then and are not so sure that we even want to go back. Perhaps the expense of the trip comes at bad time.

No matter, Emperor Augustus made his decree and everyone was required to follow suit.

But here’s the thing. Whether leaders make good decrees or bad, God has a way of bringing something good out of it. It was on November 6th that I first outlined today’s reflection. That was election day in the United States. At the end of that day some people were happy and others were not.

For the record, I’m not here to trumpet or bemoan this year’s election results at any level. But I am here to remind us all that, historically speaking, the work of God has never been dependent on the faith of a mere secular leader. Such truth doesn’t rule out the possibility of a leader creating major inconveniences with the stroke of his or her pen. It’s been done before and it will be done over and over again. But the calmer way to Christmas realizes that, over time, such inconveniences can be seen much like Augustus’ ordering of a census—just another part of a larger and more glorious story to tell.