Veritable with Emma

This week has carried with it all the familiar busyness that this season so often brings. My husband has been traveling for work. The kids have been swept up in a flurry of Christmas celebrations—crafts, concerts, class parties. I’m deep in preparation for our own family festivities, while also trying to keep a few professional projects moving forward. It’s a good kind of fullness—but fullness nonetheless.

Last night, at the school Christmas celebration, we sang “Silent Night.” The room was packed—hundreds of children and parents, shifting in their seats, phones raised, voices echoing. And as we sang those words—silent night, holy night—the irony gently pressed in on my heart. There was nothing silent about our evening. Our “silent night” was embedded in noise, schedules, obligations, and very long to-do lists.

But then it struck me: the original Silent Night wasn’t quiet in the way we sometimes imagine either.

The night Christ was born unfolded in the midst of real disruption and deep uncertainty. Mary and Joseph had not enjoyed a calm or predictable year. First-century political life was anything but serene. The simple fact that Mary was pregnant before her formal marriage placed her at real risk—socially, morally, even physically. Joseph, described in the Gospels as a righteous man, would almost certainly have been the subject of whispers and speculation. And while an angel’s private reassurance can steady a soul, it doesn’t necessarily silence a skeptical community. After all, how many people do you know who’ve seen an angel?

Zoom out even further and the world around them was restless: King Herod’s brutality and paranoia, the sweeping administrative reforms of Caesar Augustus, mass movements of people across the empire, economic strain, demographic anxiety. It was a world marked by tension and upheaval—not unlike our own.

And yet, in a tiny and overlooked corner of that vast empire, a young pregnant woman and her husband made the long journey to Bethlehem. Their arrival went unnoticed by the powerful. The lack of hospitality barely registered as more than an inconvenience to the town’s innkeepers—it was just business, after all. No one could have guessed that history itself was quietly pivoting.

Mary and Joseph didn’t yet know how everything would unfold. They couldn’t see the arc of salvation history stretching forward from that moment. But they trusted. They obeyed. They remained faithful to what God had asked of them.

And there, in the midst of noise, strain, and human indifference, the Savior of the world was born. God Himself entered our material, fragile, broken reality.

That truth meets me right where I am. I often don’t know which small pieces I’m placing in God’s vast design. I feel overwhelmed by the scale of the world’s problems and keenly aware of my own limitations. But Christmas reminds us that God delights in working precisely through the small, the hidden, the faithful yes.

Perhaps today that faithfulness looks like taking the next step God has quietly placed before you. Perhaps it’s traveling where you didn’t expect to go. Perhaps it’s making your home a place of beauty and peace for your spouse and children. Perhaps it’s carving out a small pocket of silence in the midst of chaos.

Wherever you are, may you find—or make—that humble stable, that space apart from the noise. May you allow Christ to be born anew in your heart this season. And may you trust that even there, especially there, God is powerfully at work.

God bless you this Christmas season.

P.S. For those interesting in first century history, check out this talk from Mike Aquilina about the Roman Empire around the time of Christ. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtjL0lYRHrw