I’m sure most women today would have griped just a little bit, but Mary found treasure. She and Joseph had just traveled about 75 miles to Bethlehem; means of transportation . . . sandals. Can you imagine doing that today—while pregnant and at full term? Plus the fact, that not having made reservations, when they got there, there were no rooms available at any of the hotels.
I can see it just as clearly as I am seeing these letters as I sit here typing. Just about the time they find out there are no rooms available, when you think it can’t get any worse, it does. Mary is ready to have her baby. Because there is nothing else available, they clear out a place in a stall and make the best of it; her first born child, the Son of God of all things, born in a stall. There was no epidural, no ice chips, no soft bed to lie in after it was over, no hot shower or bath; just family, a little straw and a few animals.
You would think that God would have seen to it that she could have had an easier way of it all. Instead it appears it pleased Him to let it be as difficult and as lowly as one could imagine. But . . . He knows how, in our difficulty, to make it all worth it. He sent shepherds to confirm what she knew in her heart about the child she had just given birth to. In her difficulty He was able to give her treasure.
Hunger and Thirst 