‘‘The shepherds returned, glorifying…God for all the things they had heard and seen.’’ Luke 2:20
An early pioneer travelling across the Great Plains stopped at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Amazed to discover a vast chasm one mile deep and eighteen miles wide stretching out of sight, he exclaimed, ‘Something must have happened here!’ And as Haddon Robinson observed: ‘At…Christmas…anyone who stops to look and listen must ask what the hustle and bustle is all about. A thoughtful man or woman seeing the lights…decorations…festivities, and…religious services might also conclude, “Something must have happened here!” Of course, something did happen. We need to tell the world…God has visited our planet. His Son…came to reveal God and to die for our sins (see John 1:1-14). He lived among us that we might live forever with Him. When the shepherds found the Messiah lying in a manger, they marvelled because it “was just as they had been told” (Luke 2:20).' As a result, they ‘returned, glorifying…God for all the things they had heard and seen’. They returned to their fields and flocks with fresh energy. But they still had to return. Jon Walker writes: ‘After we celebrate the birth of Jesus, we return to the office…to school…to the things we normally do…God takes us to the mountaintops…shows us great miracles and wonders, but He doesn’t leave us there. It’s in the fields and among the flocks that our faith grows, nurtured in the soil of the mundane…The conflicts over…who cleans up the mess, who gets to go home early, or who gets the biggest piece of pie, test whether it’s really Christ who lives in us.’
