In the midst of it all...

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It doesn't feel like Christmas; perhaps because it's on the weekend this year or because there's no snow on the ground but I'm just not feeling "christmasy".
The decorations are up, the music is playing, the gifts are wrapped, the menu's planned and Christmas cookies are everywhere, yet... although it doesn't feel like normal; it does feel routine.

I imagine it felt the same way for the shepherds; this was their springtime routine of being in the fields at night as it was calving season. They weren't out at night year round but they were every spring, so while it wasn't normal,  still it was the same as before.

On the other hand what Mary and Joseph were experiencing was far from their normal - a pregnancy, the gossip, visions of angels, and now a forced journey to an unfamiliar place - they were completely out of their comfort zone.
Some Christmas' feel like that, after a loss, a diagnosis, or announcement; this will not be the typically expected "merry little Christmas" to which one's become accustomed.

But, to Mary and Joseph in their unknown as well as to the shepherds in their routine, Jesus came; and with His coming brought peace to the anxious and hope to the complacent.

His birth brought these things because the Incarnation is the gift of Christmas; God has come to be with us (Matthew 1:22,23)!   He is with us both in our uncertainties and the expected.

Wherever this season finds you between known and unknown; may the realization of Emmanuel break upon your heart at some point as gloriously as when the angels appeared to the shepherds!

Merry Christmas!

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