So those are the nine things that we never would have known about Jesus if Matthew hadn't told us.  I got an email from my sweet Christian friend Amy Smith saying, "How do you know that Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem alone?  Joseph's father would have been from the house of David, as well as all of Joseph's brothers.  And there were probably many others living in Nazareth who went to Bethlehem as well."

The thing I love about the church community is that there are many members like Amy who actually read the Bible and think about what they have read.    If someone says something that they aren't sure about, they go to the Bible to check it out.  It causes all of us to be in a state of continual learning.  When you discuss things with them, they make you think.  So, I retract my statement that they were alone.  There is nothing to suggest that in God's Word.  There is also nothing to suggest that they went with a group. 

However, there is some historical evidence that people traveled in groups for safety.  Thank you Amy.

There is also some evidence that they all wrapped their waist and arms with strips of cloth so that if someone died on the trip, they would have plenty of cloth to wrap the body in for burial--a Jewish custom.  One reader suggested that this was the swaddling that Mary wrapped Jesus in when he was born.

That is a really interesting thought.  Jesus was born to die and his first clothes might have been burial wrapping.   He died for our sins, and for the sins of the world--if they accept his gift and repent. 

We are heirs of the kingdom, joint heirs with Christ because of His unspeakable gift of his life.  "And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ..." Romans 8:17a