I grew up in the church and was part of many Christmas pageants. I figured out that the best to role to have is Joseph. The worst role is to be one of the animals because you have to wear a silly costume and say “Baa” or “Moo” or worse yet the donkey's, “Hee haw”. But if you are Joseph all you have to do is wear your dad’s bathrobe and kick the donkey. You almost don’t have any lines to memorize and say at all!

Joseph for me is kind of a mystery character because so little is written about him. In a way he’s the forgotten man of Christmas. His fiancé plays the leading role and everyone applauds Mother Mary. And yet, God features him in a very crucial way in the dramatic story of Christmas.

If Joseph and Mary could coloborate a book about Christmas I think they could call it, “A nightmare before Christmas!”

Imagine you’re Mary, a young peasant, unmarried junior high school girl who has no status, no driver’s license and without any warning at all an angel steps into your house and says, “Hey Mary, don’t be afraid, but you’re highly favored, man! God’s is up to some amazing things that have never been done before and he has chosen to do it through you. You are going to get pregnant and have baby boy! That's right, God is going to borrow your womb and is asking you to take care of His son for a while!"

You might just say that Joseph and Mary’s human lives were changed dramatically when God divinely steps in and interrupts all their wonderful plans. Mary wanted a quiet life with her man. Now her life just became complicated. And get this, although Mary is highly favored of God, meaning God’s grace is all over her life, but instead of her life getting easier, it just got harder because Jesus literally came into their lives! I kinda wonder how favor of God helps?

Kidding aside, God’s plan for our lives is usually much harder than the plan that we have for our own lives. Human desire is to walk a path that has no resistance along the way.Think about Christmas, it's usually about the most self-indulgent time of the year!

I got a lead from another sermon and heard about some doctors that did a study on stress levels. They made up a basic stress test to see how much stress humans can take. They came up with a chart that showed most people normally can live with a stress level of about 149 points on a daily basis. The higher the points of stress increase the more difficult it is to function normally. Once you hit 150 points marker you are going to get sick.

Mary’s stress levels:

Pregnancy: 40 points

Surprise pregnancy: add 20 points

Marriage: 50 points

Change in living conditions (visiting her relatives for six months): 25 points

Travel: 180 km ride on a back of a donkey (several days): 40 points

Revision of travel plans: overcrowded Bethlehem had no available rooms in Bethlehem: 35 points

Sudden crisis: Giving birth in unprepared state with no midwife: 39 points

Change in sleeping habits: 16 points

Change in eating patterns: 15 points

Unexpected visitors: 30 points

Fleeing a genocide: 45 points

Mary is over 300 points already!!!

Mary would have failed a stress test! She should be sick and depressed. She should be on Prozac, dude!

How did she manage? How did she not allow fear threaten her peace?

I think, I know, it has something to do with her strong faith in God.  This ordinary girl had an extraordinary walk with God. Her response to God’s promise of a saviour shows how much faith she really had: "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said." That’s faith!

She would have a lot of explaining to do to her family, to her neighbors and to her fiancé. She was ready to loose her reputation and her fiancé. All of this did not make sense in the natural order of things. Yet she acts like a woman with an incredible healthy faith; she is able to embrace the mystery of the movement of God in her life. She hasn’t got it figured out, lots of questions, but yet she trusts! She, in essence, was saying, “This is all mysterious to me, but I am good with it 100% I am ready to be used by you God in anyway You sees fit!”

And then it has something to do with understanding that God's purposes may be a little more important than our little plans.

The world we live in is not much different from the times that Mary lived. Political unrest, disease, wars and heartache are still present. Yet you and I can gain the same peace that sustained Joseph and Mary brought to them eternal hope because they placed her trust in God. Peace Man!

When we read the Christmas story of the incarnation it is full of things that can’t be explained fully in human terms. God truly does the unexpected. As a child I would hear this story and watch Christmas cartoons about guiding stars, wise men coming from afar, angelic choirs singing, a virgin birth, and a baby in a manger that was God in the flesh. What a wonderful supernatural story! I would get goose bumps on my skin and a huge smile singing about this amazing story in front of the decorated Christmas tree because it made me feel God was up to something incredible in our world.

Most of us human beings love a good mystery story or movie. We're enticed deeper and deeper into the story because the one telling the story knows something we don't yet know. But oh how we want to unravel the clues one by one. We want to be the onew smart enough to discover the secret or the answer to the mystery.

Children are the most fascinated by mysteries! My children have seen every Harry Potter movie many times and know all the characters. They can’t wait till the next movie comes out. I went to see my first and only Harry Potter movie about three years ago and I fell asleep. Maybe it was jetlag, but I just could not get into the story.

But when it comes to the gospel story, my heart, like a child, is alive and my mind is in awe. We need keep that child like wonder about God’s amazing mystery story and respond like Mary, the mother of Jesus. She responded with reverence, obedience and awe!

The Bible is just like the best of the best mystery novels of today. It gives you just enough clues to make you want to quickly turn another page. This whole idea of gradually revealing the clues step by step to the revealing of the mystery at the appropriate time is an amazing ability!

How many of you have heard a riddle and said, “Don’t give me the answer yet?” Or have you said, “Just give me one more clue.”

The Bible, in this way, is a mystery book par excellence. It begins with the words, “In the beginning God…” How mysterious is that? Here we have an invisible Godhead creating beauty out of a darkened shapeless planet. We read the creation story and God’s says, Let there be light!” And there was light. And then we read of these amazing visits with the first human couple, Adam and Eve, in the perfect Garden of Eden. Everything is going so well until  we read about a sneaky talking serpent that deceives Eve to disobey God. Adam and Eve are so afraid of what would happen next. What would God do now with these two humans afraid and full of shame? Don’t you want to know? And so we keep reading and turn the page for another story that reveals the mysterious plan of God.

And so God looks for them in the garden, calling out to them, “Adam, where are you?” Then when they meet up God gives to them “a mystery promise” of the woman’s seed crushing the head of that deceiving lying snake! This is the first clue in the Bible of what God had in mind for us all.

I always find it hard to preach the Christmas story. It is already the most beautiful of all stories, why add to it? The real beauty of it is how it reminds us that God always keeps His promise.