Born in Bethlehem

“She wrapped Him in swaddling cloths and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” — Luke 2:7

In those days the Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus, gave an order. Everyone in his whole empire had to be counted. And everyone had to go back to their family’s home town to be registered.

Joseph belonged to the family of King David, and David’s home town was Bethlehem. So Joseph had to go there. He set off from Nazareth in Galilee, and Mary went with him. Bethlehem was a long way south, a journey of several days on foot. And Mary was about to have her baby.

When they arrived in Bethlehem, the little town was crowded with people who had come to be counted. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born.

And Mary gave birth to her firstborn son.

She wrapped Him up snugly in strips of cloth, the way mothers did with newborn babies to keep them warm and safe. And she laid Him in a manger, the wooden or stone box that animals ate their food from. There was no room for them in the inn, so baby Jesus’ first bed was an animals’ feeding trough.

Think about who this baby was. He was the Son of God. He made the stars and the oceans and the mountains. He was the King the whole world had been waiting for.

And yet He was born in a crowded little town, to a carpenter and a young girl from Nazareth. He wasn’t born in a palace. He didn’t have a royal cradle with silk sheets. He had a manger, and some strips of cloth, and His mother’s arms.

Nobody in Bethlehem knew who had just been born there. The town went on with its busy, noisy night. People were sleeping and eating and talking, with no idea that God had come to live among them as a tiny baby.

Why would God’s Son come like this? Because He came for everyone, rich and poor, important and unimportant. He came close to us, as one of us. He came humbly, so that nobody would be too poor or too small to come to Him.

The King was born. The waiting was over.

The promise kept: Seven hundred years before, the prophet Micah had said that the ruler of God’s people would come out of Bethlehem, a town “small among the clans of Judah” (Micah 5:2). Matthew tells us those words came true when Jesus was born there (Matthew 2:5–6).

Read it in your Bible: Luke 2:1–7

Dear Jesus, thank you that you came to earth as a tiny baby, and that you were born in a manger. Thank you that you came for everyone, even me. Amen.