“If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation.  The old has gone, the new has arrived.”  2 Corinthians 5:17

“And the shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.”  Luke 2:20

“If you don’t like something, wait five minutes and it will change.”  Anonymous

Every Christmas there is some new insight or epiphany that is revealed to me.  This even though like you, I’ve heard the Christmas story repeatedly.  This year it was the shepherds.

What strikes me is that after these shepherds go to Bethlehem, see the child, and make known this thing that has happened, they went back.  They went back to their familiar fields.  They went back to their familiar sheep.  They went back to their familiar jobs.  They went back to their familiar families.  They went back to their familiar lives.  But nothing was the same.  They had been changed.  Dramatically.  All because of seeing and hearing.

They had heard the angel speak to them.  They had heard the angels singing “Glory to God” (Perhaps that was the song they used to glorify and praise God?). They had heard whatever it was that Mary and Joseph told them, and they had heard the response of those people who “wondered” at what the shepherd’s told them.  But more than all of this, they had heard the voice of the Lord.  They had heard the Word of God made flesh in this tiny infant—despite the fact that the baby couldn’t speak.  They had heard that this child, this messiah, was born for them!  THEM!  Mere shepherds.  Even then those living on the fringe and the lowest rungs of society.  They heard that God cared for them.  They heard grace.  They heard love.  They heard hope.  They heard meaning. It was a message they desperately needed to hear.  But not only them, each and every one of us.

And they saw.  They saw the angel and the heavenly host.  They saw Mary and Joseph, new parents thrilled with the gift of their child, and they saw the infant Jesus lying in the manger, in His mean surroundings.  But they saw, through eyes of faith that had been opened by the wondrous revelation, a miracle:  God in their midst.  And that made all the difference in how they saw themselves.  “Certainly”, they must’ve thought, “If God cares enough to enter the world in this way, humble and simple, God also cares for us.  For He is just like us, and we like Him.”  As a result of seeing the poor child, they saw that their poor lives were also important.  They saw God differently—a God of tenderness, grace and love—and therefore they saw themselves differently.

As we stand on the precipice of another new year—2025, can you believe it?—we reflect on the past year and all that has transpired, all that has changed.

What has changed for you this past year? Maybe something sad, like the loss of a loved one, or the unwelcome diagnosis of a disease or prognosis of a life problem that can’t be rectified.  Maybe it was something wonderful, an engagement or marriage or unexpected career promotion. 

There’s been a lot of changes for me; a new job, new house, new granddaughter, and another year older.  Those are the big, noticeable changes.  There have, no doubt, been countless smaller changes that I am unaware of. 

The uncertainty of the future and the changes that await can fill us with either fear or faith.  As we consider the shepherds, it is the latter that fills us with optimism, hope, and eager expectation for what is to come.  Like the shepherds we also have been gifted with grace, with The Message, and with the gift of faith to hear and see that which is from God, all that is from God, even and especially when it is hidden, like it was in that baby in Bethlehem.

As the shepherds returned to their former lives everything seemed the same.  Nothing had changed.  And yet everything had, and they would never be the same.

The same holds true for us.  The changes that we experienced in life this past year, that we look back upon either with delight or chagrin, and the unpredictable changes that we will experience this coming year, are irrelevant compared to the inner change that comes from hearing and seeing the Christ Child, whose spirit fills us with grace, love, hope, and all that is needed to navigate the changes in life.