Christmas Wonder

Mary and Joseph are often portrayed with the baby Jesus on the front of Hallmark Christmas cards or emblazoned in stain glass windows around the world. Many of us like keeping them in that setting because they seem to represent a reality in which, as the Christmas carol sings, ‘all is calm, all is bright.’  If truth be known, their real life experiences were anything but! Oh the questions that must have dominated their hearts and minds amidst being visited of angels, trying to explain a mysterious pregnancy, and fleeing to another country… all the while being entrusted in raising the very Son of God. The complexity of the lives of Mary and Joseph invite us to consider our own reality in living God honouring lives in a world that seemingly has little time or interest in the story of Jesus. He is Emmanuel – God with us!