When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

Luke 2:15–21 (ESV)

If your holiday season is anything like mine, everything moves quickly. It seems as if a boulder begins rolling down hill sometime around late October or early November, rips through Thanksgiving, takes out early December with a vengeance, before coming to a stop the week after Christmas. For some of us, the real Holy Week is the week after Christmas, because that’s when everything finally slows down. Speed is all around us at Christmas. There’s deciding which postal service you are going to pay for the exorbitantly priced holiday rush shipping (we’re a UPS family). There is the frantic last-minute trip to the mall (remember when we only shopped in those?). There is sprinting through the grocery store at 4:59 pm on Christmas Eve because Uncle Lawrence forgot the yams (it’s always the uncle, isn’t it?). Or there is the organized mass chaos of everyone ripping through their Christmas presents at the same time (which my family does, but my wife’s family does not, leading to a very disorienting Christmas for Lillie’s first year with my family).

It’s as if we are being told that we have to move through Christmas quickly. But what if we are moving quickly towards the wrong thing? You see, we move quickly through Christmas, but spend it chasing after that one gift we think will satisfy our hearts, but will run out of use sooner rather than later. Or maybe your life feels like a blur in December, but most of it was spent chasing after the end of year quota that will give us the feeling of an extra cushion. Or maybe we move quickly through what we deem unimportant, instead dedicating all of our time to chasing after our “perfect” Christmas - which, I’ve noticed, for most people, doesn’t seem to have the only “perfect” human being prioritized in it. Maybe moving quickly does not lead us to the presence of hope and joy (supposedly the hallmarks of this season) if we are moving quickly towards the wrong thing.

It’s in this moving quickly towards the wrong things that I notice the movement of the shepherds in our verses for today.

The shepherds, we are told, “went with haste.” Just like everyone else around Christmas. Except, what are they going towards so quickly?

“They went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.”

In our haste during the Christmas season, it’s easy to move quickly towards and through the events, the parties, the corporate outings, the mall trips, and the vacations. Because we must move so quickly towards all of these things, we end up moving quite slowly towards the baby in the manger. We give him a Christmas Eve service, a few moments of time in an advent calendar, or a reading of the story on Christmas morning. But rarely do we give Him all of our Christmas season, which we would only be able to do if we moved quickly towards Him and slowly towards everything else.

I know when I move too quickly towards anything in my life, I feel the consequences afterwards. I end up feeling stressed. I’m exhausted. I’m burnt out on people. Moving quickly towards the wrong things can do that. And I’ve had Christmases where I’ve felt all of those things - meaning that I spent much of my Christmas season moving quickly towards the wrong things. But notice the result of the shepherds’s hasty movement towards the manger.

“And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.”

I want to be glorifying and praising God throughout my Christmas season, but after it, too. I know the Christmas season will be full and fast for almost all of us. But let’s be reminded by the shepherds to move quickly towards Jesus, and maybe a bit more slowly towards everything else.

Ean Snell