This week we decorated our house, inside and out with our Christmas decorations. Monday I took them all down from storage; Tuesday we started to unbox a few, and the same on Wednesday. On Thursday and Friday we hung all the inside decorations, and yesterday, Saturday, we decorated the outside pole-lamp and two reefs on the front porch, all before this cold snap came in on Sunday! Brrrrr!
As I was “unboxing” our decorations, I felt a little like I was opening Christmas presents and the joy of finding all our “Christmas stuff” was kind of exciting. I know the boxes listed what was supposed to be on the inside, but sometimes what was “said” was not what I found. A few decorations were not where they were supposed to be, but then, I imagine you have made some of the same type of discoveries yourself! Anyway, there was a sense of excitement and surprise that is not normally there for such a project. Plus, I decided to open all the boxes to see if we wanted to use every decoration that was in the box or not. Like I said, there was kind of a sense of surprise and excitement as I ventured into each box.
However, can you imagine the surprise that the shepherds got on the hillside that first Christmas morning as the angels made the announcement of the birth of the Savior? Their story is found in the second chapter of Luke’s gospel. The story tells us that as a group of shepherds were watching over their sheep on a hillside outside of Bethlehem, and if I might say, it was not in the winter time. The winters in that part of the world are too cold to be out watching sheep. It must have happened either in the spring or fall time of the year, otherwise they would have had them in a barn or some kind of enclosure to keep them warm. Anyway, as they were doing what they normally did at that time of the year, suddenly and without warning, the dead of the night was awakened with a light so bright that the shepherds could do nothing but shield their eyes, and most likely fell upon their faces or bowed down upon their knees! They had never seen such a sight as that! That event was not at all what they were expecting nor even looking for. It was just an ordinary night broken open by an in-ordinary event!.
