With the fierce snowstorm along the eastern seaboard clogging roadways and airports this past weekend and stranding travelers by the thousands, I was reminded that the story of the first Christmas in Luke's Gospel features a difficult trip, too. Joseph and Mary took to the roads with other countrymen, following an edict of the government regarding a census. By the time they arrived at Joseph's ancestral home in Bethlehem, there was not available lodging at the inn. There must have been lots of folks looking for a place to stay in the little village. But there was space, evidently, in the little livestock shelter nearby, and that is where Mary delivered her baby, Jesus, who would be known for all succeeding generations as the Christ.
How like our Savior to be, even in birth, identified with "the least of these." He would spend the days of his later ministry on the road, often with "no place to rest his head." When our way seems hard, when the road is long, we remember the One who is familiar with difficult travel.
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