It’s a few days after Christmas…do you have what Eric, our youth pastor, called “Monday after Christmas syndrome”? As in, Christmas is exciting (also exhausting!); then we have to get on with life.

Eric suggested that Mary and Joseph must have experienced that, too. There’s a lot of excitement in having a baby, even more so when the birth is announced by angels, and you have middle-of-the-night visits from shepherds. Then, life with a new-born sets in. If you’ve had kids, you know.

We can be thankful that Mary and Joseph were faithful to their calling. They did the hard work of raising a baby, out of the limelight, without nannies and servants. They would have had to live just like the rest of us, doing the next right thing.

On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived. When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.” (Luke 2.21 – 224, NIV)

When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him. (Luke 2.39 – 40, NIV)