Following the Star

Pause

Being known.

Being valued.

Belonging.

These are gifts of God’s Love.

We receive them in Christ.

Listen

When the angels returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go right now to Bethlehem and see what’s happened. Let’s confirm what the Lord has revealed to us.” They went quickly and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. When they saw this, they reported what they had been told about this child. Everyone who heard it was amazed at what the shepherds told them. Mary committed these things to memory and considered them carefully. The shepherds returned home, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. Everything happened just as they had been told.

Luke 2:15-20

Think

After their encounter with baby Jesus and his family, the shepherds returned to their ordinary lives, but they were glorifying and praising God for all they’d heard and seen.

Think about how this would look in your life – if you went about glorifying and praising God. Some may say it is impossible to live like this. But today’s scripture guides us when we don’t know how to live out our praise.

Like the shepherds, who had an amazing experience but then had to return back home, we have an earthly home – an ordinary life, a family, a neighborhood, a school. But when we have an amazing experience with Christ, we can’t just forget what we’ve seen and heard and go back to life as it was before. Returning home after encountering Christ means adopting a new style of living: glorifying and praising God for all we’ve experienced.

Do you want to experience the feeling of living on earth, but glorifying and praising God? Know that you belong to God. Speak your praise: tell another person today about what God has done.

Israel Loachamin

Pray

Lord, thank you for allowing me to live a life of glorifying and praising you. May I place my uncertainties that I can’t live this lifestyle at your feet, and may I give the glory and praise to you all of my days. Amen.

Go

Where shepherds lately knelt, and kept the angel’s word,
I come in half belief, a pilgrim strangely stirred;
But there is room and welcome there for me,
but there is room and welcome there for me.

Can I, will I forget how Love was born and burned
its way into my heart unasked, unforced, unearned,
to die, to live, and not alone for me,
to die, to live, and not alone for me?

from “Where Shepherds Lately Knelt” by Jaroslav J. Vajda (1986)