What? It's NOT About Me?

“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled.” (Luke 2:1, RSV)

Time is important, but timing trumps. I’m not a huge fan of chance, coincidence, or cosmic randomness. I believe God created everything, is actively sustaining it, and that He is engaged with His creation. So, when He set everything in motion, He appointed a specific time for the Messiah to arrive on the scene in order to offer redemption to humankind.

Caesar Augustus may have been an independent thinker, but his decision to take a census was not entirely arbitrary. God ordained the timing.

While trying to put myself into those citizens’ places, I admit I likely would have complained and whined about being forced to make the trip to our hometown just to feed the inflated ego of an already piggish enemy ruler. For most, the trip was costly, time-consuming, and inconvenient. Isn’t that true of many daily experiences?

Even though the people may have thought it was all about them, as I feel while struggling with inconveniences, disappointments, and absurd demands, it wasn’t. I, and perhaps they, drone, Why is this happening to me? I don't deserve this. It’s not fair. Yet they were part of a higher plan, a design that had nothing, yet ultimately everything to do with them. They were the background scenery, not the focal points. It was necessary for God to call all peoples to their homeland in order to bring Mary and Joseph on the scene at the proper time. And, of course, the two of them were just background scenery as well. The Baby King was and is the focal point.