In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria.
Luke 2:1–2, ESV
I love it when Linus opens with this in the Peanuts Christmas Special. It was something important for Charles Schultz to include when he created it and has been a part of the tradition of many families. Luke gives us the time and the place with the names of people. This was to establish something that would have been easily corroborated at the time it was written. Something that if it had been untrue when it was written would have been easily corrected. I know that there are those who will refute it today but remember that the same denials of events lost for a time have often been recovered and those that spoke against the events at one point citing evidence that was later found in error only show how those that believe themselves wise are only later found to be foolish. It is in these words that we can find our confidence in knowing that these events were set up in history. A history that transformed the world from that moment on and changed our history. It is that reality that we find our hope in a child born to a young maiden who was a virgin and entrusted to the care of her betrothed who trusted in the Lord. It is this same obedience that we find that has brought salvation to us all in a little child.
Let us pray. I thank you, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, your dear Son, that you have kept me this night from all harm and danger, and I ask you to protect me this day also from sin and every evil, that in all I do today, I may please you. For into your hands, I commend myself, my body and soul, and all that is mine. Let your holy angel watch over me, that the wicked foe have no power over me. Amen.