Earlier this month I posted Room or no room at the inn or no inn… in Bethlehem. It was a borrowing from Alan Wilson who had beaten me to it this year. Then just a few days ago, I came across Kezia’s post Alternative Nativity which is a poignant mix of Scripture words and contemporary photos.
Here are some extracts from Luke’s Gospel (The Message) and recent photographs that Kezia has put together to focus our thoughts as we approach Christmas and on into Christmas Day and beyond. I hope you will go on to read Kezia’s full post.
About that time Caesar Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Empire. This was the first census when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Everyone had to travel to his own ancestral hometown to be accounted for.
So Joseph went to Bethlehem. He took with him Mary, his fiancée, who was obviously pregnant by this time.
But there was no room for them in the inn. While they were there, the time came for her baby to be born; and Mary gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in a manger.
These are not the cosy images of a school nativity play or Sunday School or even perhaps what might happen in our churches this Christmas.
But then the words of Luke’s Gospel and Matthew’s Gospel have nothing cosy about them either. Perhaps we should acknowledge that current events can help us de-sanitize our Christmas story this year and give us a real insight into the risky and radical arrival of how God the Father translated himself from divine into human in the person of God the Son.
This year, may we all meet the boy who became the man who was crucified and resurrected for you and me.
Thanks to Kezia for permission to re-post. Why not return to the link at the top and read her whole post.
John 20:21 
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