Christmas Eve 2025 ∙ Isaiah 9:2–7 ∙ Titus 2:11–14, 3:4–7 ∙ Luke 2: 1–20 ∙ December 24, 2025
It was night. Darkness enfolded the world in its wings. The earth and plants gave off their nocturnal fragrance.
The fragrance entered the nostrils of a flock of sheep, sheltering in the folds of a hillside just outside Bethlehem. The sheep followed the fragrance of the forage, and shepherds followed the footfalls of the sheep.
The shepherds were three, one for each watch of the night. And the first watch began.
A hush hung over the hills. Hunting hyenas howled in the distance. Across the countryside, shepherds on watch duty ate figs and slapped their slingshots against their legs to stay alert. In time, they roused the second-shift sentries and surrendered to sleep.
It was during this second watch that the sky near Bethlehem began to change. Something or Someone was there. Nothing earthly like a predator, either animal or human. No – no way to describe it. And the voice! Was that a voice? Were those words? What was that sound – almost like music?
Time to shake the companions awake. Did they sense the same thing, feel the same imperative?
One leapt upright in excitement. The other, exhausted and heartsore, merely grumbled and rolled over. No energy or desire to go anywhere. More than willing to stay back with the sheep. Truth be told, they were more comforting company.
The two shepherds who went returned transformed. No longer gossipy and quarrelsome, they spoke little and wore their awe like a tangible aura. Most astonishingly, they were gentle with each other, almost reverent.
Struck by the change in them, the third shepherd began to feel a prickling presence. The darkness, though deeper than ever, seemed to shine. The shepherd thought of the psalmist saying night and day are alike for God, leaving nowhere to hide – a sensation terrifying to one who already had too much experience of exposure to merciless adversaries. Yet it stirred the ashes of an impossible hope, a wondering need to see.
The other two shepherds were wide awake now; there was no danger of the flock’s being left unattended. The third, not daring to look up into the shining dark, began to steal away toward the town. From its outskirts came a thin cry, not unlike that of a new lamb. Drawn to that cry, still guarded and weary, the shepherd approached…
The scene that awaited was entirely disarming. A sleep-deprived, very young woman with straw stuck in her hair was changing a tiny baby in a manger, of all things, while a gentle but harried man tried to keep the curious livestock at a sanitary distance. Still afraid to look up, the shepherd looked down at the child – and felt fear dissolve into tenderness. The needs of newborn lambs and newborn humans were not so very different. This child needed warmth, cleaning, milk, safety, and kindness, with the skin-to-skin contact new mammals depend on to learn that life is good.
And so, while the mother went to rinse out the cloth, the shepherd bent over and held the infant close. Crooned a little song. And felt a gradual lifting of the heart as an ancient bitterness began to drain away.
The shepherd thought again of the psalmist singing to God, Where can I hide from Your presence? Night and day are both alike to You. Indeed, the shepherd thought, When I can’t or won’t look up, I look down… and there You are. There is Love. Right in front of me and right inside of me. The shepherd began to laugh, looking down at the infant and saying to God, You got me – again! You always do in the end, You old trickster, You. From a throat that hadn’t laughed in years, laughter rang out loud and hearty, and the shepherd looked up at last unafraid and laughed into the shining darkness.
The laughter altered the atmosphere around the manger. The three adults began to chuckle together about a God who turns everything upside down to bring it around right. And so this child, who would one day teach that the last shall be first and that we must lose life as we know it to find life as God makes it, this child entered the world hearing about the impossible ways of the One with whom “nothing is impossible.”
We, too, walk in darkness – “by faith and not by sight.” We keep watch through the long night, wondering what the next hour holds for us and our world. At times we have nowhere to hide from earthly dangers, let alone from God. We, too, could use a sign to rekindle our hope in the reality of the impossible, in the God who is not just up there but down here, with and in us.
How do we know God is here with us? We don’t, not for certain. But we feel it sometimes. We have signs of our own, as unique to us as our lives. When I walk in the woods and a deer, one hoof raised, returns gaze for gaze; when a pair of cranes leap and call, when a woodchuck vanishes into the undergrowth, when between wooded banks a kingfisher wings chittering along a ribbon of water… my heart burns within me, and I come back changed.
It doesn’t pay the bills, it doesn’t solve the world’s problems. But I keep going back.
Did the shepherds go back, too? Or, just maybe, did they begin to recognize the Christ child in those around them – their friends, their loved ones, in time (to their dismay) even those they had considered their enemies?
Where do you glimpse the holy Presence? How are you changed?