Let's take a step back into the field where the shepherds were camping in the neighborhood before seeing baby Jesus for the first time.
There's a moment here that we can easily overlook if we're not careful. It's a moment of miraculous bigness that takes us out of the "ordinary" within this story and ushers us into the supernatural.
The Message translation writes, "At once the angel was joined by a huge angelic choir singing God's praises:
Glory to God in the heavenly heights,
Peace to all men and women on earth who please him."
How did I miss the bigness of this moment for so many years?
A heavenly host. We're not talking about a half-a-dozen angels showing up on the stage of a Christmas pageant. A host is an army. Imagine troops of angels storming the sky, all singing out praises to God.
Imagine angels for as far as your earthly eyes can see.
Imagine them filling the earth with their praises.
Imagine their heavenly voices meeting your human ears.
Imagine that choir busting out and rejoicing, the way we will one day rejoice when all of this is over and God calls us home.
Imagine that same choir ushering you and me into eternity.
A taste of sweet, sweet heaven for ordinary men.
I don't know if, in this lifetime, we will ever experience something like this. It seems to be a moment frozen in time, reserved for the birth of the Messiah. But I believe there are moments when heaven kisses the earth, and we feel the perfect love of God surrounding us.
The moments may be brief, but they exist.
In community.
In prayers.
In phone calls and letters.
In wisdom.
In pockets of peace.
Last year, as we walked through a series of scary health complications with our daughter, I had so many moments where I felt the presence of God so firmly. It was as if a tiny bit of heaven was mixing with the earthly mundane of doctor's appointments, waiting rooms, conversations with close friends, and everyday encounters. I'm growing a little older and encountering heaven more frequently in bite-sized, brief glimpses.
I think Jesus has that for all of us.
Do I think we can figure out how to live in a state where nothing ever bothers us and we never do anything wrong? No, I don't. But I believe we can access his presence and bring more heaven down to earth in how we show up for others.
We may never witness a heavenly host of angels while we're here on this earth, but I think we get the chance to be answers to prayers all the time.
Eugene Peterson writes, "The prayer of the angels is the first intimation we get of Jesus' instructive prayer in Luke 11:2-- "on earth as it is in heaven. However earthbound we feel, however humdrum and mundane our work is, our prayers give us a place in a choir that expresses all the melodies and harmonies that heaven comprises."
Our prayers shift things.
Our presence shifts things.
When it would be easier to stay with our noses pointed down at our phones, our showing up shifts things.
And, even amid our distractions, we can invite God's presence to surround us. We can ask him to meet us in the ordinary, in the chaos.
It may not be a host of angels at your door, but I think God plants little ways for us to encounter him daily.
Brother Lawrence once said, "I have abandoned all particular forms of devotion, all prayer techniques. My only prayer practice is attention. I carry on a habitual, silent, and secret conversation with God that fills me with overwhelming joy."
Habits. Silence. Secret conversations. God lives in these things. You are never too far gone to access him.
May this season be one of great attention to the things of God.
May this season hold the miraculous where you aren't expecting to see it.
May you encounter bits of heaven hiding all over the earth.
May you feel the love of God surrounding you in all you do.
