Today I am linking up with Jen and friends at Soli Deo Gloria.

I remember the moment like it was yesterday. Brent was unemployed, struggling to find a job during an industry slump. We were not homeless, but only because some friends knew a couple who had been temporarily transferred out of state. They were open to having our family house-sit for them. We had moved in, if I recall, just in time for the new school year.

Brent found some contract work and things were just beginning to look up. Then, one day in December, we found out that our host family was being transferred back to the Metroplex at the end of the month — about two weeks away — and would need their house back, thanks. They notified us as soon as possible, but we knew it would be a scramble to find something really affordable in such a short time. And right at Christmas, too.

Well, life goes on. I sang in a church Christmas program that evening. Still feeling stressed, I decided to drive the boys around and look at Christmas lights. They were 6 and 2 at the time.

We drove along wide concrete streets past nice, neat lawns and pretty houses all decked out for Christmas. As Christmas carols played over the radio, I felt a little envious of the families who lived in those houses. I wondered where we would land this time, and began to think about how Mary and Joseph had found themselves in a similar situation.

There was no Christmas holiday to disrupt business in the first century, but Mary and Joseph had their own stresses to deal with. Bethlehem was swamped with people registering for the Roman census, so all the inns were full. Plus Mary was expecting her Baby quite soon.

I remembered that the couple did find shelter, that God knew where they were and had something ready for them, though I’m sure it was not what they would have chosen. Surely he knew where we were, too. I began to feel better.

Then it happened. A commercial ended and the station went back to music. Amy Grant’s warm, mellow voice sang, “I’ll be home for Christmas….”

“Oh, shut up!” I said to the radio.

So that was my super-bah-humbug moment. I must go on to say that God did provide a place for us to live, just in time, and the price was right. We would stay in the two-bedroom duplex for three years, while our lives smoothed out and we began to be as settled as the Christmas-lighted residents I had once envied.

Yeah, he knew right where we were.

Merry Christmas!
Thanks for reading,
Jan