Welcome back again to another podcast of Struggling Well, and this is coming to you on Christmas Eve. So, So, merry Christmas to you all.
Merry Christmas.
and we talked last week a little bit about story. And so, this is the familiar story of the Christmas story that I have read many times. You've read it many times. And maybe you are even hearing it when you go to church tonight. But it's the beginning part of that story in Luke 2. It says, "In the same region there were shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flocks by night. And the angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy, for this will be to all the people.", I, you know, for years have read that, but it wasn't until we have had the privilege of going a couple different times to Israel itself and being in Bethlehem, getting outside of the town into what's called the shepherd's field and just seeing the terrain of just that normal, it's a rocky kind of sloped hilly area terrain. And somewhere in that area is where Jesus was born. But that night to the shepherds who were not highly thought of people. It was not necessarily the job you aspired to above all other jobs. You're just ordinary shepherds and it weren't even your sheep. You were probably watching them for somebody else. And it was just another night of many nights. And all of a sudden, boom, this scene from heaven explodes on you. And I understand the great fear, but I also understand that it was just an everyday night. I love where the passage says, and I'm reading from the NLT, that the radiance of the Lord's glory surrounded them and they were terrified, but the angel of the Lord said, "Don't be afraid." And you think these men about these men, they were uneducated. they weren't the upper crust of Jewish religion. they probably had not been taught by a rabbi. And God reveals himself to the these ordinary people. I love that.
Yeah. In ordinary situations in everyday life. I mean, they were doing nothing different. That was what they did for a living. That's how they cared for their families. and I think I know for me there have been times where I run the risk of wanting God in the spectacular, wanting God on the mountaintop experience, mount, wanting God in that type of thing. When I fear we miss God in the everyday, we miss him appearing to us in the everyday. Now, this was certainly not an everyday experience when the heavens explode with after the announcement, they explode with heavenly hosts and they're just overwhelmed by it all. But it was in those everyday moments that God spoke to them.
I'm probably go way off here, but I was thinking about every try to be way off.
I'm sorry. It happens periodically. I'm thinking about everyday moments and just in my own life. I'm We've been talking about this for a couple of weeks. The busy iness the trying to get everything ready for Christmas. I often find myself not looking at the ordinary with any kind of wonder. Like recently I saw a video and it was of the galaxies of the stars and I was speechless watching this video of how many stars there are in galaxies and that God knows the names of each one of them and placed them there one by one. And that is something ordinary that we take as ordinary as we look in the sky and we see it the stars the moon whatever but it's absolutely extraordinary. However, what we tend to want is we want God to show up in the extraordinary. The birth of Jesus in a cave or whatever it was that was, you know, not even with a full roof and sides and anything any protection that was extremely ordinary. Maybe not even ordinary, but less than ordinary. And I want to read to you from a book that I've been studying recently called The Familiar Stranger. And I may have mentioned it before. It's excellent. It's about the Holy Spirit, but this is what the author Tyler Staten says. We tend to miss God in our midst, not because he's too extraordinary, but because he's too ordinary. We tend to look for God in the wind, earthquake, and fire rather than the whisper. We climb our own Mount Horeb with expectation. when the preacher speaks, when you attend a conference or a worship experience, when you go on a retreat and we pigeonhold God into speaking at special times in special places, all the while he's speaking all the time.
Yeah. And it's that everyday thing like I get up every morning I do I stop before I do anything else and just realize God, you've given me another day.
it's in those everyday things. I don't know who I'll encounter today. We don't know. So, so can I be listening to what God might want to do through the people I encounter? How he might show up and show himself? I think it's the Puritans who coined the phrase the man manifest presence of God, meaning that God shows up in everyday ways. And we don't do this often, but we'll ask each other sometimes where did we see God today in our life? And there was nothing big going on. We may have had a couple of appointments, but it was like, okay, did God show himself? Did we were we looking for him? That's the other thing is I'm not even sure I'm looking for him in my everyday.
And Christmas Eve is normally hectic. Hopefully, you have finished doing what you need to do to get ready for the next day. I don't know what your traditions are about Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but when you all are gathered together, take a few seconds to look at your family members, not looking for something as extraordinary about them, but look at them and find out what is ordinary and just absolutely amazing. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but what it what is it about your child or your spouse or your grandparent or your whomever it is that is gathered at your home where you see the extraordinary ordinary work of God?
Yeah. Because everyone that you look at, every eye that you look into of another person is somebody who's made in the image of God. And there goes Gus cuz he didn't get included in this one. but they're made in the image of God. So there's no ordinary people.
No.
And so we do hope and pray for you that it is a great Christmas. I realize that for some of you it's the first time of Christmas with you've lost a loved one. and some of you are going through difficult times. And so it's not all bright lights and tinsel and everything.
But may you find the one who was born over 2, 000 years ago. May you find him in your celebration of this day and of this season. We hope you have a great Christmas.