The Next 363 Days

It happened again, just as it does every year. Christmas has come and gone and I'm left wondering how it can be over so quickly. Yet even as I write that sentence I feel chastised by the use of the word "over." If I have an understanding of what we have just celebrated, I know that nothing is "over." Rather it continues on as it has since that night so long ago when those shepherds were summoned by angels to witness God's plan unfolding on earth in the form of a tiny baby.

Every year as the day approaches, I make a point of reading Matthew and Luke's accounts of the nativity. This year, however, I fell behind and I didn't get to the part about the shepherds until after Christmas. So, on December 26, I sat on my couch reading about the shepherds' encounter with the angels. I was impressed with how they decided to go check out the news they had been told. Scripture says that "they hurried off" to find this baby and were then so amazed that they spread the word of what they had witnessed to everyone they saw.

However, as I thought about this story the thing that struck me even more than the shepherds' response, was the question, "What did they do after that?" After what they had experienced, how could they go back to just tending sheep out in a field somewhere? They had just witnessed the event that every Jew dreamed about. They had seen the Messiah! How do you make other people understand the enormity of this experience? Suddenly a few sheep on a hillside must seem pretty insignificant. But where exactly do you go from there?

I don't have the answers to these questions. But it stunned me to realize that the lives of these men had to have been changed forever in that one moment. They didn't have the whole story yet... only this one magnificent part. But that alone had to be enough to change them forever.

So now, as I look at my house full of Christmas decorations just waiting to be stuffed back in their boxes for another year, I have to ask myself "What am I going to do after this?" Where exactly am I going to go from here? I have the whole magnificent story! But am I going to let it make a difference this year. Will I allow it to change me forever...one day, one trial, one joy, one relationship at a time? I know what I want my answer to be. The next 363 days hold the actual answer.