Christmas is meant to be a magical time. Snow, presents, time with your family. As an adult though, the pressure to make every Christmas perfect is exhausting. What’s meant to be magical is stressful. It’s exhausting. This exhaustion and stress is a much better picture of what the first Christmas was really like for Mary and Joseph. It was a time of fear and anxiety. Herod wanted to kill their baby. Joseph thought he had to figure out a way to quietly separate from his fiance. Into this stress and anxiety is when Jesus is born. God became human during a time of stress and fear, when the powerless were up against the powerful and fleeing for their lives. And though Jesus appeared powerless throughout his whole life, it’s his kingdom, not the kingdom of the Romans, that is still standing today. The kingdom of the gentle, self-sacrificial servant outlived Herod by thousands of years and counting.