One Day To Bethlehem

You can practically see it from Jerusalem, practically roll down the hill in a wagon to get to Bethlehem.  Not that Joseph would want his VERY pregnant wife rolling in a wagon.  But, having come from Galilee, they were from a different province of Herod the Great’s kingdom.  Likely taxes were due, more registrations, more paper work, more red tape.  The world is on the move and the land of Israel is then, as today, a place of high security.

For Mary and Joseph, it probably amounted to a whole lot of waiting.  When it came to collecting money in general, taxes to fees to tolls, the Romans had the system built for efficiency.  And they were at the city that David built.  They were the parents of David’s heir, promised by God to take up the power of his forefather.

They were probably very quiet while under those walls.  It was well-known how paranoid Herod was, how many relatives who might have been threats to his reign that he had executed.  When the magi would come from the east to lay gifts at the feet of their son, would Mary and Joseph remember back to this day, when they were well within the grasp of Herod, if he’d only known, before they made their escape to Egypt?

Sometime on the date that we call in the modern calendar, Dec. 24, they gained their permission to go.  Once more upon the donkey, maybe their purse lighter due to some extra payments to get things moving, and they are on their way, finally.