Praying for Surprising Glimpses of Redemption
Dear friends,
Recently, as I’ve been re-reading the Gospel of Luke, something caught my attention in a new way. The second chapter of Luke starts with a governmental policy shift with profound ramifications for everyday people and – it would turn out – for the history of the world: “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world” (Luke 2:1 NIV).
I tend to brush past that statement of historical context without much thought. It’s just the back-story for the Christmas narrative, setting up why Jesus ended up being born in his father’s ancestral hometown of Bethlehem, where there was no room in an inn, rather than in Nazareth, where presumably Jesus could have been placed not in a manger but in a crib in a cozy home, surrounded by extended family and community, rather than farm animals and stranger-shepherds.
But for Mary and Joseph – and presumably thousands of other people – this governmental policy change was presumably a dramatic interruption to their lives. The biblical text does not tell us the policy rationale for a census to be taken, nor does the Scripture weigh in on whether it was a prudent and just policy or not. We don’t know if it was popular – which of course would be a far less relevant question in the Roman Empire than it might be in a democratic form of government like ours in the United States.
We can speculate, though, that this decree of an empire-wide census displacing an entire population created profound hardship not only for Joseph and Mary, who had to travel a long distance while toward the end of pregnancy, but for many, many others.
And yet even in the midst of what might have felt like a disaster, God was still at work.
I remind myself of that in the midst of policy changes, in our country and in various other parts of the world, that feel incredibly disruptive and, for some individuals directly affected, disastrous. I have a hard time seeing where God could be at work within such trying situations – but the lesson of this Roman census is that God could work even in the midst of governments and policies that I find to be short-sighted or even unjust. As Joseph’s Old Testament namesake observed, even what human beings might intend for evil, God can use for good (Genesis 50:20).
Even as I urge elected officials to pursue policies that I believe are consistent with the biblical call to justice, I also pray that God would surprise me by how he might redeem incredibly difficult circumstances. Would you join me in praying for the following:
- Displaced people around the world who have had to leave their homes because of persecution, war or other hardships
- Immigrants within our own country who may fear the separation of their families in an environment of increased immigration enforcement
- Lawmakers in our country and around the world, that God would guide them in the way of wisdom to pursue justice, peace and the common good
- God to work redemptively through His people in the midst of challenging circumstances
In Christ,
Matthew Soerens
National Coordinator, Evangelical Immigration Table
