hurry

The preacher said there are 24 days until Christmas and 24 chapters in Luke. I love a good equation. But I turned around twice, and it was December 12 and I found myself in Luke 2.

How does this happen, this relentless pace of time even with the best intention to slow down and savor the Savior. I moseyed over to verse 16 and found some soul brothers. The shepherds, they “hurried off.”

I do that well. I hurry, here, there, everywhere. Of course, I have never seen a sky full of angels but if I do, and I honestly would love that, I hope I would be in hurry.

For about 20 seconds, I felt a real kinship with these shepherds. I envied them getting to see first hand this miracle; this first Christmas.

Every Christmas depiction of this scene flashed through my weary brain and I realized, the shepherds remained shepherds. Their “hurrying” involved gathering up their sheep and moving to follow a star.

I imagine this scene much like my morning as we attempt to load in the car with children flying in ten different directions and mostly not wanting to move.

I kind of think my children resemble sheep and perhaps against my better judgment I am shepherding them. Perhaps we all hurry, maybe that’s not the bad news. Perhaps it is what we are hurrying towards that needs a bit of light thrown on it.

The shepherds were more than curious; they had to know this was special and that the baby was life changing and this event would be one to tell the grandchildren.

I rarely can put a lens on anything I do. I rarely can pass things, events, urgencies through the lens of the eternal. These guys did just that. They hurried with purpose.

They took their work and hurried.

I realize they had a clarion call; rarely if ever will we see angels fill the sky and speak directly to us, yet, in all reality; they have, He has.

The Word brings us truth, that these shepherds did not possess. We are told the significance of this birth, this life, this death, this resurrection. We are told our purpose and our place. We are to spread the Word; we are to do the work of love and we will one day live with Him.

That is cause for a holy hurry.

A hurry that rushes after the things of Him, the people who do not know Him and the lives that are unlovely in the missing of Him. Perhaps me tearing through the book of Luke was not the right path. Perhaps dwelling for a bit on these shepherds, these wildly obedient hurrying herders was indeed where I was supposed to be even on the twelfth of December.

Perhaps the day without a dozen things to do will never come but perhaps the hurrying towards can become a task of worship and less a task of work.