Less than one week from celebrating Christmas, its easy to fall into a sense of anticlimax. The decorations are still up in many houses, some people are still on a break from work, and yet "Twixtmas" is a kind of limbo. The build up has finished, the carol services, the nativity plays, the Christmas songs on the radio. Somehow those things can feel a lifetime ago.
Even reading the Bible we see that the same shepherds who were sitting in their fields watching their sheep as the angel brought them the glad news of Christ's birth and as the host of heaven burst into glorious song as they declared the wonder of God becoming flesh; those same shepherds who bowed and worshipped the baby in the manger and left declaring the praises of God and telling everyone they met what they had witnessed - those same shepherds are never seen again.
Extraordinary.
Almost as if had never happened.
Life just went back to normal.
Same old, same old.
But there lies the wonder.
Because nothing would ever be the same again.
Because God, the infinite One, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, the One whom even the highest heavens could not contain, the One who made man in His own image and breathed life into the creature He had formed from the dust, had entered into the realm of humanity.
The glory of the Almighty contained in the body of a frail and helpless infant.
And yet, for all that glory, He was happy to fade into anonymity.
His glory veiled.
His time was yet to come.
Every promise yet to be fulfilled.
But everything had already changed.
Because of Jesus.
How quickly we can forget, as we get caught up in the business of life, the wonder of Christmas.
How soon we can lose sight of the greatness of God as we become consumed with the trivial, the mundane, the everyday.
But just take a moment and remember what you were celebrating less than a week ago.
God made man.
The Word become flesh.
And think what that means for us today.
That same baby became a man, who laid down His life in our place.
So that He can enter into our lives as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Not just within the world, but within all those who believe in Him.
Who gives us the same glory the Father gave Him before the world began.
Who has made the impossible possible.
This is the truth that remains.
This is the wonder that never ceases.
This is what gives hope, and joy, and strength to face the times when everything we celebrated seems a million miles away.
Because ever since that first Christmas, nothing can ever be just ordinary any more.
We may never have heard of them again, but the shepherds knew.
No matter what, they knew what they had seen.
They knew who they had worshipped.
Even in the everyday, the dull, the monotony of watching sheep.
They knew.
Nothing was ever just the same old, same old.
Because of Jesus.
So remember, and give thanks, and worship God who has done this for us.
Because when you do, you see the glory.
And nothing is ever mundane again.
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