Have you ever known anyone who was in a major motion picture?  I had a friend once who was so excited.  He was an extra in one of the latest block busters (I don’t even remember which one any more).  He told me that if I watched closely in this one particular scene, and if I looked carefully at the 30 or so people in the background, that I could pick him out with a blue shirt on – for about 2 seconds.  He was a movie star!!

This morning I was reading once again (probably the last time until next year) the Christmas story in Luke chapter two, and was suddenly stuck by a small detail that I had never really paid any attention to.  Luke writes: ‘In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world … And everyone went to his own town …’ I started thinking about Tom and Judy, making the long trek from Beer-sheba in southern Judah all the way north to Bethsaida on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, hundreds of miles, with their three young children and ailing grandmother.  Or maybe Janice, the middle aged widow, facing foreclosure, as it was, on her deceased husband’s estate -- having to put everything on hold and register to pay a tax that she couldn’t afford anyway.  Each of them at the best irritated by the situation, and more than likely down right ticked off.  For some, no doubt, this decree spelled financial ruin, physical hardship, or worse.  All of this just so a pregnant teenage girl could deliver in a stable in Bethlehem?  And even that they had no knowledge of.

And yet, I wonder how they feel about the whole affair today, if we could somehow reach up to heaven and ask them?  I wonder if they would be like my friend, the extra; proudly pointing out their face in the crowd as cameras panned the epic of all eternity.  Now I am sure that God, in the way that only He can, was orchestrating many individual stories and adventures along the way; but I also suspect that there were some who were just along for the ride.  The taxes, the hassles, the crowds really had nothing to do with them personally, it was just all part of fulfillment of a prophesy, and they were a part of the backdrop. 

Was it still worth it? Were their lives still significant? Two thousand years later I think we would say: Yes!  Which in turn offers me some encouragement for my often mundane life. 

Now as I’ve said many times before, I believe that God is writing a specific story of each of our lives.  But honestly, some details just don’t seem to fit.  Maybe I just don’t see it yet, or maybe … maybe some of those times I am the extra, part of the backdrop of someone else’s larger story.  Maybe it won’t be until years into eternity that I fully grasp the need for that headache that I endured so that someone else got to where they needed to be.

And maybe on that day, I too with gather my friends around to watch a scene unfolding on some heavenly giant screen, set in a cold winter Midwestern town, and point out that guy in the background with a grey sweater … that’s me – the movie star!

To the King,

David