The shepherds returned home.

The heavens had opened. The sounds of the sky had revealed the choir of jubilant angels. The Messiah had come. Born in humility. The shepherds were the first to be told.

And then they returned home.

No speaking tour of the surrounding regions to explain their unique supernatural revelation.

No grasping for celebrity in this moment of divine choosing.

They returned home.

They were changed, but they stayed.

They had experienced the extraordinary, but they returned to the ordinary.

The shepherds returned home.

Pause here.

More than at any time in history, so many of us have the option to bounce from place to place. Searching for that one dream move that will change our lives forever, we jump from job to job, city to city, nation to nation. 

We believe that just around the corner there is something more than the ‘same old’. Our restlessness intensifies. 

We are told that our freedom is found in our mobility, and that if we stay we are stuck.

The result?

We end up never finding ‘home.’ A place and a people where we are planted. A place where we are known. An ordinary place where we find extraordinary love.

I wonder if our wandering isn’t working?

I wonder if our instability creates insecurity?

I wonder if there’s joy to be found in radical rootedness?

I wonder if our greatest contribution to the world will flow from our decision to stay put?

I wonder what would happen if we unpacked our bags and took a vow of stickability? 

I wonder what would happen if we rolled-up our sleeves and put our hands deep into the soil of our land?

Ordinary people beheld His eternal glory.

This was their way of escape.

Leave the blue-collar world of long night shifts and low-pay.

Opportunity of a new life beckoned.  

But the shepherds returned.

They just went home.