by Victor Chen

Nobody could have imagined a Christmas like this.

Being apart from extended family and friends feels cold and lonely. Having to stay with immediate family can be a difficult thing. 

We can feel bitter against the government for the order that brought us here.

There is ethnic tension and political distrust. 

There is fear and despair over the future.

Where are you, Lord?

Nobody could have imagined a Christmas like this.

Yet here it is, right in the Bible.

A Roman government order goes out that everybody be registered.

An unwed couple with child has to travel nearly 100 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem. 

There are no family and friends for them to stay with. Scandal surrounds their family situation. 

This unwed, expecting couple probably felt lonely, unwanted and cold.

And it was here that Christ the Lord came — to a lonely, unwanted, scandalous family situation amidst ethnic tension and political distrust between the Jewish and Romans.

So if you can identify with anything that was just described this Christmas, rejoice. 

Rejoice, because the Lord came on Christmas for people just like you.

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. - John 1:9–13 (ESV)