Happy New Year! We continue to celebrate the incarnation–when God became a person that actually lived and breathed and walked this earth. God, who created all living things, became God’s own creation.
Most of the frenzy and commercialization of this holiday has subsided and we are settling down for our black-eyed peas and a quiet afternoon. It’s almost as if we sit in the place with Mary and Joseph and Mary has held a finger up to her lips as if to say, shhhhh, be quiet. Don’t wake the baby!
To those who sat out in the countryside, on a hill or in the desert, and were accustomed to watching the night sky and paying attention to the patterns of nature, they picked up on a message that Creation was sending out–an announcement that something holy and sacred was about to take place. I think today we can still understand that message when we put down our phones, step away from the radio and TV, and wander outside to sit, look up at the sky, or watch the trees blow in the wind, and pay attention.
When we pause, when we listen, when we watch, when we wait, we get a sense that there is something so much greater than the doomsday messages being thrown at us day after day. There is something alive that is a presence of love and peace and redemption amongst us, this force of love that is always there even in the midst of chaos, sorrow, and hardship. And we rejoice! We go out and follow that presence of God on earth, and in our excitement, wake the baby!
I pray as this New Year begins we will remember that God comes to us in unexpected ways. The shepherds noticed the star in the dark of the night. Angels showed up in a stable with a poor family who had to deliver their baby away from home and midwives, and share the space with animals. I doubt most people around would have paid any attention or believed what was taking place, but the scrappy shepherds did.
Sometimes all we see is the concrete, the hardness of life, and never notice the little flower that grows up through the cracks. Jesus came as a baby, the presence of Jesus is here now, all around us, and Jesus will come again and again and again. Don’t be afraid to follow the star, don’t be afraid to listen to your heart. Look, listen. As the beloved poet, Mary Oliver once wrote: Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. That sums up the Christmas message for us, I think. Be like those shepherds who work and live in harsh conditions, but notice a star, notice when the wind changes, and follow those signs to Bethlehem to discover God in a barn.
Magdalena's Musings 