Hastings: Hope — On the way to Bethlehem
“You have come to the aid of your servant, mindful of your mercy — the promise you made to our ancestors.” — Luke 1:54-55 The Inclusive Bible
A young married couple expecting their first child walked toward Bethlehem. Their country was under foreign rule, and the ruler had ordered everyone to return to the town of their birth to register for a census, most likely for taxation purposes.
The couple didn’t have much that could be taxed. He was an itinerant construction worker and she had become pregnant before they were married, so they stayed with relatives along the way. But they shared a secret hope. Before she was married the young woman had been visited by an angel who said, “You have found favor with God. You will bear a son … and his reign will never end.”
The young woman had asked the angel how this could be. The only answer the angel gave was that an elderly relative was also pregnant — because “nothing is impossible with God.”
The woman had believed the angel and said, “I am the servant of God. Let it be done to me as you say.” The young man wasn’t so sure. However, he was a kindly man who did not want to publicly disgrace the woman he loved, so he had planned to divorce her quietly. But an angel had come to him in a dream and told him his wife’s pregnancy was a God-thing to “save people from their sins” and to fulfill the divine promise of “Immanuel — “God is with us.”
And so the young couple traveled side by side, carrying a secret hope in their hearts. They had hope their child would fulfill the promise of God and deliver their country from foreign rule. They had hope their child was the promised one who would scatter the proud in their conceit, depose the mighty from their thrones, raise the lowly to high places, fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty.
The young couple walked on to Bethlehem with hope for all their child would become, for soon, very soon they would give birth to divine hope in the world.
The Rev. Celia M. Hastings has a master's degree in religious education from Western Theological Seminary in Holland. She is author of “The Wisdom Series” and “The Undertaker’s Wife."
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Hastings: Hope — On the way to Bethlehem
