How does Christmas come more quickly every year? Am I starting to sound old? :)
Anyway, I always try to gather some thoughts amidst the craziness of the season....so here goes...
I was considering the role of the shepherds the other day in the whole birth of Jesus and wrote down some ideas about what they must have felt.
We had just gotten up to do the night shift--
the graveyard shift as a shepherd, watching over the fields by night.
This is the lowest of the low, but we have to make it,
so we work and hope for something better some day.
On this particular night, we were visited by unlikely guests--
most people are scared of the dark, but we've gotten used to the vastness of the open skies, the bleating of the sheep,
and the sounds most people run from in terror.
On this dark night, we became immobilized by light....fear gripped us as the skies lit up around us...
It took us a while to realize that we weren't in fact dreaming;
We were surrounded by a haevenly host, proclaiming the birth of the hope we had been waiting for.
We couldn't believe that it was all true, but hope was enough to make us pick up our staffs and walk in faith to the child.
As we journeyed, we kept trusting in each step and hoping that what we heard was true.
We arrived as we left---
dirty, poor, and with nothing to give but out worship of the hope deep inside us that was now in the form of a baby boy.
And all we could do was bow and worship.
If we stop for a minute, we will realize that as God called to the shepherds, he calls to each of us--in our poor, dirty states, we are called to come, to walk, to run to meet the hope found in Christ...not because we are good, or wealthy, or wise,
But because we have enough need deep within us to seek something better, something that gives light (sometimes with a little fear) and hope.....
May we realize our deep need and meet the one given for ALL of us...and as we see our own need, may our eyes be opened to the need all around us, in the lives of those he loves.
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