Bethlehem is only a few miles from Jerusalem. Today you have to pass through a check point because Bethlehem is not under Israeli control. But you can still get to the town where Jesus was born. You do have to bend down to enter the door of the Church of the Nativity.

Once inside you have to stand in line and jostle with other tourists. But with a little patience, you stand for a moment at the traditional place where Jesus was born—marked with a 14-point star.

Outside from the Shepherds' Field, you can look across a little valley to see the hill that supposedly is the place where Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin. At the end of the dry season, the Judean wilderness is clearly evident from Bethlehem—it's where the green stops. While we were there, we also could see a flock of sheep below in the valley.

At the end of the day, we came to a souvenir shop in Bethlehem run by a Christian. It was off the beaten path, and the neighborhood was not tourist friendly. He welcomed us and asked us to pray for peace so that he and other Christians could continue to live and share their faith in Jesus. Christians in Bethlehem are just over one percent of the population. He just may have been hoping that we would spend some of our money in his shop, but I think he was sincerely looking for a peace neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians would achieve. I think that he already has the greater peace of Jesus. His welcome sticks with me.

Why relate such a travelogue? For a couple of reasons. First, many Christians still want to visit the places mentioned in the Scriptures. Of course, they come for all different reasons. I remember one young woman simply posing at a site with one of those "model" poses. I wondered if she was there just to get close to a potentially important and historic site, without knowing its significance. But others were there out of reverence and respect for Jesus.

Another reason for sharing the sites of Bethlehem is to ask you to pause and marvel at what happened there so long ago. As we stood at the Shepherds' Field, I wondered why God would come to such a place.

Actually, I wondered why he would come to earth in the first place. The tension between opposing political views isn't new or unique. It's just that the flashpoints for open hostility change. The weapons have changed too, from a Roman short sword to automatic weapons, artillery, and missiles. Why would God bother? Even if open hostility is checked, greed, jealously, pride, arrogance, drunkenness, sexual immorality and perversion, as well as many other dark secrets we'd rather not know about persist just below the surface of human life. Have you checked the news lately? Yes, indeed, why bother?