Back to...Normal?

            I'm always concerned about how long the experience of Christmas will affect us as we move into another year.  Next week this time, I suspect our Christmas decorations will be put away and we'll be back into our groove, anticipating 2014.  I don't want it to be the same this year.  How about you?  For one last post this year, let me re-post something from a couple of years ago. 
             It seems each year, as my mind is drawn back to those days so long ago when our Savior was born, that I find myself immersed once again in some “sanctified speculation.” I wonder just how the individuals that we read about in the Biblical account must have felt during the experience that we now call history.

            The shepherds are on my mind today, and one particular point keeps resurfacing in my thinking.  The text states this: “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.”  That seems simple enough.  Here is the thought that keeps coming back to me, though:  They were going about their regular, daily activities when the message of "Christmas" invaded their lives.  Later on in the Biblical record, we read that "the shepherds returned…"  After it was all over they went back to their daily lives, doing the same old thing with the same old sheep!  Isn’t that how it is too often?  We knock ourselves out celebrating the Christmas season with one more special service, one more Christmas party, one more get together with friends… "Oh, life will get back to normal after Christmas is over," we think.

            But their daily lives were not "back to normal" after Christmas, were they?  Though they were back out on the hillside the next night in the same spot, with the same dumb, smelly sheep, their lives were not the same.  As they went about their daily activities, they were busy reporting what had happened and what they had been privileged to see and hear from God.  For those of you familiar with the account, you noticed that I left out part of the verse.  They "returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told."

            Here’s the point:  How has the message of Christmas affected your everyday life?  If you are like many people (myself included), Christmas is a wonderful time of year to reflect on the Savior’s birth so long ago.  But Christmas comes and goes, even if we do spend much of December celebrating it.  What will happen now that Christmas is over?  Will all of the spirit of celebration and wonder at the birth of the Savior of the world be packed away in boxes with those lights and ornaments?  Or will our daily lives reflect the fact that in the midst of our everyday life there is a spiritual reality that affects everything that we do?  Let’s determine that this year will be different.  Let’s seek by the grace of God to determine to return to our lives after the hustle and bustle of Christmas is over with a rejoicing heart and praise on our lips that will impact everyone around us.

            I trust that this will be a season filled with blessing in the midst of the “busy-ness.”  And may God use this Christmas season to do a great work in our hearts that will prepare us to more effectively serve Him in the coming year...once things get "back to normal."