During the Christmas season, it's not uncommon to set our expectations unrealistically high.

We like perfection. We don't like messy and we

strive to fill our family gatherings with joy and avoid complications. Today on

Insight for Living Chuck's when Dahl continues a message he started on our previous program.

He's reminding us that life is rarely perfect.

That's certainly true of the first Christmas.

A pregnant teen doesn't meet our expectations. That's certainly true of the first Christmas.

A pregnant teen doesn't meet our expectations for the mother of God's son.

So what are we to make of this shocking reality?

Chuck titled today's message, A Relationship, A Miracle.

To be a Nazarene was no honor. To be a Nazarene was to be despised by the devout and haughty Jews of Judea.

Nazareth, where Jesus spent most of his years, get this, was a rough, rowdy, crossroads town.

It set a stride the main trade routes that crisscrossed northern Palestine.

Trade, commerce, and caravan traffic were its life blood, prostitution, slavery, narcotic traffic

swirled through Nazareth like raw sewage spilling over its streets, polluting its

shops. That is where Christ grew up. We don't like it that messy. We don't like to hear that. We like

little town of Bethlehem. We like it pure and almost antiseptic. But it was Nazareth. And in fact, scripture

states that Nazareth was their native hometown, meaning Josephs and Mary's.

Speaking of which, what a bewildering set of words we encounter

when we look at this first chapter of Matthew and we read about the two

of them and their relationship and their courtship and they don't square with our Western times. They don't sound like courtship in our day

because it wasn't anything like our day. The birth of Jesus Christ was as follows,

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