The account of the Shepherds seeing the angels on Christmas is my favorite text associated with the birth of Jesus. It tells the announcement of Jesus’ birth to these guys who were out in a field, working in the middle of the night. The shepherds see the angels, hear the announcement, and are amazed. I guess that is not so surprising considering the experience they had. They immediately went to the nearby city of Bethlehem to see what the excitement was all about. There they saw the newborn Jesus and shared what they had heard. Afterward, they went back to work and disappeared from the story. What blows me away about this account is that these men saw God made man. The Bible teaches that Jesus is God, who came to live among us to save us from our sins. He was fully God and also fully a man at the same time. These shepherds, the bottom rung of first century society, stood witness to the birth of a king. Even bigger, they saw the Son of God face to face. That is huge. Then, they went back to work. I remember when my daughter was born. I held her in my arms and helped give her her first bath. It was surreal to suddenly have a brand new person in the world that I got to be there for. Not long after that, I went back to work. I sat in traffic. It was a jolting experience. I can only imagine what it was like for the shepherds to stand before God, having seen choirs of angels fill the sky and sing his glory. Then, they went back to the cave where they had sheltered their sheep for the night and resumed their lives. I’m sharing this, because in many ways, we do the same thing. Only for us, it starts before Christmas and goes all the way through. We sorta brush past God in the hallway on the way to the next social obligation, Christmas party, gifts we need to buy, or whatever. We surround ourselves with Santa, Rudolph, and tons of Christmas music. We eat too much junk food and spend too much money. In the end, if we do those things without stopping to consider the fact that Christmas is a celebration of the fact that when I was at my worst, grossest, and most wicked, God sent His Son to die in my place so I can be forgiven. The Bible says that all things were created through Jesus. Still, He came for me. That’s a lot to wrap your head around, and if you hear it enough times without spending time digesting the implications of the story, the wonder can kinda fade. If you surround the story with lots of distractions, then it gets harder to hear the crying baby in a stable or the social rejects being amazed that they got a visit from an angel and saw God in the flesh. Apart from the potential that we can miss the glorious story before and during our celebration of Christmas is the possibility that we can lose sight of it when we go to work the following week. God making us into new people through that baby and His life mission is hard to be excited about when there are dishes to wash, gifts to exchange, and a job to go back to. To celebrate God’s gift for us in Christmas, and then forget it the next day, is tragic. Real miracles should change our lives. I urge you to look for God’s work through Jesus this season. Wonder and awe at it. After it has ended, continue to wonder and awe. Be made new by the experience. Otherwise, we leave the best gift under the tree and ignore the choirs of angels announcing the miracle because we have other things going on.
