In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.
4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. Luke 2:1-4
90 miles. That’s how far Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary had to travel to register for the census. We don’t know how far along she was but even at 10 miles a day that’s nine days. They had no place to sleep along the way either plus they probably had to fear bandits and thieves. Fortunately, because everyone else was traveling, it would have been a well populated route.
Still, nine or ten days of riding a donkey or walking to get to Bethlehem.
Of course there were others in their situation, pregnant and needing to travel so it wasn’t an uncommon event.
The Scriptures tell us (Micah 5:2) that Bethlehem would be the place the Messiah would be born, so God had to literally move the known world around to fulfill that prophecy. How else would they know to get there? God used a Roman Caesar to make way for the Son of God to be born in Bethlehem. The people would obey because it was the law. They would be inconvenienced but they would pack up things and travel.
When God answers prayer, sometimes He has to move hundreds or thousands of people around to make it happen. We may never know it, but it happens every day.
The “coincidences” you experience happened because God was 45 or 50 steps ahead beginning to move things around. Of course we don’t see immediate answers to prayer because it may be the first time you’ve prayed it. God puts it on your heart over a long period of time for a reason. You’ll never know how it all happened, just that it did happen.
Mary and Joseph knew they were a part of something special in the world, but didn’t know all the details, nor did they need to. They just knew they were forced to walk or ride 90 miles away to register for a census. They were fulfilling a prophecy, probably without knowing it.
In a similar way, it’s interesting to think that we could play a small part in answering someone else’s prayer too. In fact, we’ve probably been the answers to hundreds of prayers of our friends and family but didn’t know it.
Just because you don’t understand what is happening in your world doesn’t mean that God doesn’t care or isn’t answering prayer. Mary and Joseph walked 90 miles to fulfill prophecy. He may ask you to do much more than that to help in answering someone’s prayers.