Day 23: Mary traveling pregnant
Read Luke 2:1-7

For both Mary and Joseph, traveling to Bethlehem would have been a hard trip to make. Almost everyone walked in these days, only those who were rich could afford to ride a donkey, and even fewer would have an ox-drawn wagon in which to ride. From the price Joseph and Mary paid at the temple eight days after Jesus was born, we know they were poor. So the eighty-mile trip would have taken them three to four days to walk.

God often asks us to do things that are hard or take a lot of effort on our part. Sometimes we want to tell God that this is not the right time or that we will do it when we feel better. Joseph and Mary may not have thought that their trip to Bethlehem was God’s direct calling; they might have just thought about it being something the government was demanding of them. We are not told if they were remembering this prophecy about the Messiah being born in Bethlehem. But we do know they obeyed God’s leading.

Arriving in Bethlehem, they had another problem – there was nowhere they could stay the night. Every place available for travelers had been taken by other people also coming to Bethlehem as Caesar had commanded. At last, they found a shelter normally used by shepherds to shelter their sheep. Mary used the manger, a place where the shepherd put feed for the sheep, as a cradle for baby Jesus.

*How do you face difficult times in your life?