Monday, December 4, 2017

REASON FOR THE SEASON...Day 4

How are you doing at BEHOLDING JESUS so far?

Today I want you to let your mind drift back to that night in Bethlehem when JESUS was born.  Have you ever given that night much thought?  We read the Christmas story in Luke 2.  We see the re-enactment often done at churches throughout the Christmas season.  But today, I hope you will take a few moments and really think about that wonderful night...an ordinary night, until....UNTIL....well, see it as Max Lucado describes it:
"The sky was ordinary. An occasional gust stirred the leaves and chilled the air.  The stars were diamonds sparkling on black velvet.  Fleets of clouds floated in front of the moon.

It was a beautiful night..a night worth peeking out your bedroom window to admire...but not really an unusual one.  No reason to expect a surprise.  Nothing to keep a person awake.  An ordinary night with an ordinary sky.

The sheep were ordinary.  Some fat.  Some scrawny.  Some with barrel bellies.  Some with twig legs.  Common animals.  No fleece made of gold.  No history makers.  No blue-ribbon winners.  They were simply sheep...lumpy, sleeping silhouettes on a hillside.

And the shepherds.  Peasants they were .  Probably wearing all the clothes they owned.  Smelling like sheep and looking just as wooly.  They were conscientious, willing to spend the night with their flocks.  But you won't find their staffs in a museum nor their writings in a library.  No one asked their opinion on social justice or the application of the Torah.  They were nameless and simple.

An ordinary night with ordinary sheep and ordinary shepherds.  And were it not for a God who loves to hook an "extra" on the front of the ordinary, the night would have gone unnoticed.  The sheep would have been forgotten and the shepherds would have slept the night away.

But God dances amidst the common.  And that night, He did a waltz.


The black sky exploded with brightness.  Trees that had been shadows jumped into clarity.  Sheep that had been silent became a chorus of curiosity.  One minute the shepherd was dead asleep, the next he was rubbing his eyes and staring into the face of an angel.

The night was ordinary no more.

The angel came in the night because that is when lights are best seen and that is when they are most needed.  God comes into the common for the same reason.  His most powerful tools are the simplest."


What strikes me most about this is the emphasis on the ordinary.  It was an ordinary night with ordinary sheep and ordinary shepherds UNTIL God stepped in.   Our lives for the most part are ordinary too.  We are going about our Christmas activities as we do every year.  But what if this year, we allow God to step in and to change our "ordinary" into the "extra-ordinary"?  What if this year we make it a point every day, and as often as we can throughout the day, to focus on JESUS.  To remember that night, to meditate on the details of it, and to allow the magnitude of what actually took place that night to invade our ordinary?  I want to do that.  How about you?

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