Blessings in Adversity

There are so many people who are fed up, feeling hard done by, unappreciated for their efforts and frustrated. Add on to the pandemic’s impact the prevalence of seasonal affective disorder and the bitter cold and grey skies of most days in January and you have a recipe for discontent and even despair. When we’re this disgruntled we quickly forget the glitter of Christmas and the promise of its story.

I took down my tree and all the decorations around the apartment last weekend, waiting like every other year until after Epiphany. It’s always a bit sad, and yet this time I felt a sense of expectation too. Because I’m working hard to change my perspective on the challenges I’m facing, as well as those in our community and world. And I’m striving to be ready for whatever God asks and is doing. The holidays provided some respite and different focus. Now I’m forced into working from home and I’m nesting and finding a calmer rhythm, realizing as I do the privilege this is which many don’t have..

It occurred to me, as I try to re-frame and find blessing in this ongoing time of unknowns, that perhaps we not only get our own story wrong from time to time about why things happen, but perhaps the Christmas story too. Bear with me for a minute as I try to explain, and I accept that I could be way off base here, but this ‘epiphany’ came to me over the last week or so as I considered a number of articles about the nativity by various scholars. We tend to view Jesus’ birth as a negative, lonely experience with the only redeeming thing being Jesus Himself coming into the world.

But what if Bethlehem wasn’t an unwanted nuisance of a trip for Mary and Joseph but that it actually shielded them from the shame and labeling they experienced back home about her pregnancy? What if, not only did Jesus’ birth there fulfill scripture but it also helped them as Joseph still would have likely had family there? What if they were welcomed with open arms and Mary was cared for and Jesus was received into a loving Jewish extended family? What if they stayed in the main area of the house because other family arrived first, occupying the ‘inn’ or guest room (as some scholars suggest as a more accurate translation)? What if they stayed on in Bethlehem not just to honour the requirement to dedicate Jesus in Jerusalem at the temple, but because they found refuge and sanctuary there? What if God planned all this so that they could recover from what they had just gone through over the last 9 months?

We know that Jesus was a child anywhere up to two years old when the wise men arrived bringing their gifts, gifts that would provide for them on the next challenging part of their lives. We know that God warned the magi in a dream to not return to Herod and that God warned Joseph in a dream to flee with Mary and Jesus to Egypt. Herod’s determination to annihilate any threat to his power caused the murder of all boys up to age two in Bethlehem. The respite Mary and Joseph received was brief, but coupled with the gifts from the magi it held them in good stead as they fled the country, going to Egypt where there was a large Jewish population who, if they followed the Torah, were bound to offer them help and hospitality..

My thoughts may seem far-fetched, and they certainly don’t reflect our usual interpretation of the story. However, I’d like to rest with them a while longer and risk being wrong. They seem more fitting of a God asking so much of a young couple, ensuring that they were cared for by family who weren’t embroiled in the scandal. They seem truer to the One who asked them to bring Emmanuel, God with us, into the world.

We don’t know how long they had to live in Egypt, a place of great importance to their Jewish heritage. It could have been months or more before they came home, settling in Nazareth long after the scandal had died down. God protected them in difficult times at every point along the way. God equipped them and provided for them from unlikely strangers and perhaps distant family. They were not alone.

As we venture further into January and try to decide how much news is helpful to consume as we navigate various Herod wannabes and the threat of sickness and death, I pray that we are able to look at our situation from different perspectives. Perhaps what seems unfair or too much to us actually has blessings attached. Perhaps we are being protected from things we can’t fully understand but which God sees clearly and out of great love for us provides us with refuge. Perhaps if we look beyond ourselves there are gifts being held out to us from unlikely places or gifts we are being asked to share.

The journey was never promised to be simple. Our human systems are not foolproof or guaranteed to hold up in all situations. We are not God, that is clear. But God is around and among and beside us. Grace is offered. Community is possible in creative ways even in this time. Love is still in the world.

May we be able to see the blessings and be grateful, in spite of it all. And may we be willing to be vessels of blessings to others whose light is flickering and fading.