Getting to Bethlehem

[Having lived across much of Canada’s vast landscape, Darrell Buchanan, with his wife Darlene, teaches Bible at Western Christian College in Regina, SK.  He contributed this post to a 2004 Advent Blog, and I’m happy to re-post it here.]

Ask anyone in the New Testament for directions to Bethlehem and they’ll say, “Go out to the desert and keep going until you get to the River Jordan. You can’t miss it. There you will find a man, standing waist deep in the water, baptizing people. That’s John the Baptizer. If you want to go to Bethlehem, you’ve got to start there. There is no other way to get there.”