Be Still And Know

Luke 2:1-3 'At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. (This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census.' A friend of mine once commented that he wasn’t bothered whether the story of Jesus’ birth was historically accurate or not. He was happy to accept it as simply a beautiful story. Dr Luke, who wrote this Gospel, would have profoundly disagreed. For Luke, the historical context of Jesus’ birth was of crucial importance and, as a result, he supplies us with more information than any of the other Gospel writers. It was typical of the Romans to conduct censuses. They liked to have a clear account of what was going on throughout their vast empire. And so Joseph and Mary made the long and arduous journey from Nazareth, in the north of the country, to Joseph’s ancestral home of in Bethlehem, not far from Jerusalem, in the south. The meticulous historica