When we read the gospels and the Christmas narratives what is it that we think we are viewing?  

Here I've made a little drawing of Mary and Joseph heading to Bethlehem.  I have no idea what that countryside really looked like but here you go! It is a sketch, which is about all we get in the gospels, a sketch from just a few paragraphs of text about the beginning of the Lord's life among us.

Some may have had the chance to visit Israel , Judea, and Galilee --maybe even Egypt, too, but having those memories and the visual information to inform the readings, a firm idea of the things that are presented in the New Testament is impossible --like the star, the angels, the sojourns.  

Looking at classical paintings, Renaissance works and even contemporary works of the events of this season one can see the breadth of expression and interpretation, but we might ere in thinking the artists actually thought the scene looked anything at all like what they offered.  

Perhaps through the retelling, the revisit we make each year, as we mature (hopefully), grow in grace and love, we can re-imagine what we once read or saw in the stories and tune ourselves to the gospels and all their expressions in ever new ways, to realize what is being presented to us by Matthew and  Luke. It's an amazing story! Just to think of two people simply walking through the woods and along roads to the ancestral home of David can become meaningful in our own sojourn to Bethlehem in 2013.