For this Christmas Week, I read the story of Jesus’ arrival in Luke 1 and 2, and was struck by how the miracle of the Advent happened through a series of ordinary, everyday circumstances. Joseph needed to do what we all dread: be counted in order to pay the taxman. As Benjamin Franklin famously opined, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
We slog through our receipts and records in order to meet that April 15 tax deadline, and we complain about filling out that census form every 10 years. But imagine having to travel to the place of your birth in order to fulfill those requirements! For Joseph and Mary, it was inconvenient and probably painful. To add insult to injury, he couldn’t find a hotel room!
My husband travels for work and often has to book hotels on the fly; his greatest concern is that he’ll have to sleep in his car, because a…
