Each advent season brings an ebb and flow of reflection and emotion as we welcome Immanuel and peer out towards His return.

The first advent was an equalizer. Everything would be made straight, level, even. The Christ would come for one and all, good news of great joy, for all people. Those who had been sunk low into the valleys, the poor in spirit, the broken and the beaten, they would be lifted.

Foreordained providences from eternity past dictated that when God came to earth, He would dwell in Nazareth, and be a Nazarene. Joseph is yet unaware of God’s intentions.

Evil is rarely without excuse. That’s to say, those who perpetrate the most horrific acts of treachery and barbarism are especially adept at explaining and justifying their actions. Despots are only one-dimensional at a distance.

The men who deal in dreams have no problem discerning the message from the Lord. They will not report to Herod, the unkingly king, of the child’s whereabouts. If Herod is half as conniving as he appears, he will have already sent a scout or two to see where the magi delegation settled.

The three kings on camel backs carrying their costly coffers in outstretched hands is an unfortunately inaccurate account as we most often tell it. It’s painful to accept that they were not present at the nativity.

Anna had lived a life of devotion, this much is apparent. Six decades of fasting and prayer in the temple is extraordinary. Anna only occupies three verses and yet I dare say we’d be hard-pressed to find a rival example of godliness in the whole of scripture.

Simeon is an Old Testament man, on New Testament pages. The Holy Spirit was upon him, a unique presence afforded to only a selected few in this era between the covenants.

After circumcision on the eighth day and an additional 32 days of waiting for ceremonial uncleanness to pass, Joseph and Mary will hike with baby bundled up the Jerusalem hill to the temple mount.

John, Michael, Brad, Wigglethistle, what’s in a name? In this case, I suppose we should include Joshua or JESUS, but in saying so we acknowledge that the name was nothing particularly extraordinary.

Mary was not afraid when Gabriel appeared to her, not like Zacharias and the shepherds. Instead she wondered at his strange greeting, and contemplated how she would be with child while being a virgin.

Regardless of social class or questions of conduct and character, shepherds were not cowards. David was an exceptional young man, but was he exceptional among shepherds? In rescuing sheep from lions and bears he did that which was common to shepherds.

Abel is the first shepherd we encounter, in Genesis 4:2, though Adam must have taught him how. Abraham, some generations later, continued the legacy of the nomadic shepherding his fathers passed to him. Isaac would be a shepherd, as would Jacob, and all of his sons. Moses and David the two great leaders of the Jacob tribes would be shepherds by life and trade. The LORD himself is as a shepherd to his people.

And she brought forth her firstborn Son- I don’t suppose we need the grisly details, but the single line offered is understated. If you’ve given birth or been present for one, you know there’s a little more to it than just bringing one forth like whipping out a pack of bubblegum.

Various competing interpretations of why there was no room at the inn, whether there was any inn at all, and what that would have been, have cascaded down two thousand years of disagreement. No matter, whether the inn was the guest room of a family house or a communal lodge for weary strangers, it had no place for Joseph, Mary and Jesus.

After decades of self-inflicted servitude to his uncle Laban, Jacob will return to his homeland by way of Ephrath. It is here that his beloved Rachel will give birth to her second miraculous child, Benjamin, and here she will die in the ordeal and be buried.

Death and taxes, so they say, are the only two sure things in life. I might add a few certainties to that list, but it’s a solid start in any case. Joseph and Mary will hike the familiar but treacherous 90 mile trail down to Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem, a trip Mary has already undertaken once this year. Joseph will be enrolled in the Roman government’s latest taxation scheme.

Luke’s gospel story begins where it ends, in the temple(Luke 24:52-53). It will end with belief, but it begins with doubt. Zacharias, an older man accustomed to disappointment, but nonetheless faithful, has drawn the lot which would be his once in his lifetime honor.

It was a moment of refreshing redemption for Elizabeth. The birth of her firstborn would be the end of her indignity, the casting aside of long worn shadows and shame. The Lord had remembered her, and her community rejoiced around her.