Luke 2:1-20

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah,* the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host,* praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’*

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Christmas has a way of feeling extraordinary. All the gathering, feasting, and laughing — it’s a day when memories are made and traditions are cherished. For many of us, it’s the kind of day that feels just right, filled with a sense of joy and meaning that lingers long after the wrapping paper is cleared away. And nearly every year, as the lights glow and the laughter fades, I find myself asking the same question the late great theologian Elvis Presley asked: “Why can’t every day be like Christmas?”

And if not every day, what about most days, or even more days than not? Because in reality most of our days are not like Christmas. Most of them are quite ordinary, mundane even. Of course, there are valley and mountain-top moments, but the sum of those days pales in comparison to the days we would consider routine. Or at least that’s how my life has felt lately; not in a bad way, but if my days were put into a novel, you wouldn’t pick it up, or at least not twice. They aren’t quite boring, because I’m not sure life with a “near two-year-old” can ever be called such.

But when I reflect on the best moments of my life—the memories I cherish most or the life I aspire to live—it doesn’t look like the majority of my days. Most days feel unimportant in comparison. Get up, help get everyone off to where they need to go, go to work, come home, make dinner, say I’ll clean or read but do neither, go to bed, and do it all over again. Does this sound familiar?

Yet, what if those ordinary days aren’t unimportant at all? What if those moments, mundane as they seem, are exactly where God chooses to meet us?

One of those nights while I was neither cleaning nor reading and the babe was asleep, this video stopped my scrolling. It made me question what I was seeing. Take a look:

Thomas Deininger is an artist who lives on a farm in Rhode Island. In his early twenties, he went on a surfing trip to some remote islands in the Pacific. While there, he was shocked to see all the trash and plastic washed up on the beaches. At the time, he was a painter, but when he returned home, he couldn’t get the image of all that garbage out of his head and wanted to do something about it. So he began scouring beaches, parks, and dumpsters, collecting trash, particularly pieces of nostalgia: toys, cassette tapes, old phones. And from this waste, he started creating beautiful, mind-altering sculptures of the creatures endangered from that same trash.

These works start with an illusion. At first, you see a brilliant, yet familiar sight: a parrot in all its colorful splendor. Then as you step to the side, the illusion shatters and you see something you never expected; what you once thought was the head of a beautiful bird becomes bottle caps, action figures, plastic netting, and a floppy disk. Step closer and the scene turns bizarre. The whole thing is made up of material you never expected, put together in ways that make no sense.

“I am fascinated with perspective and illusion,” Thomas said in an interview. “I value finding potential in the mundane and the overlooked.”

Deininger’s work shows us that beauty can come from what’s overlooked, what’s forgotten, what seems like trash. This is the lens of Christmas: God’s ability to take what seems ordinary—even broken—and create something extraordinary.

Consider the nativity. At first glance, it’s serene and familiar: Mary cradles her sleeping, or at least content, baby, Joseph gazes with admiration. The shepherds gather to see what had been told them, and the animals crowd around too. It is a beautiful, picturesque scene.But step to the side, come closer, and see it differently.

Mary, a young, unwed, lowly woman with no great characteristics or influence, travels with her not-yet-husband Joseph, a poor carpenter, to Bethlehem, a tiny, impoverished town in the hills of Judea, to give birth in a room where the animals stayed, and places her fragile, newborn baby in a feed trough, surrounded by animals and shady shepherds from the nearby fields.

You see, when we step to the side just a bit, this pristine, beautiful image of the nativity transforms and we see Jesus' birth from a new perspective: God chose to come among us through ordinary, overlooked people in a forgotten, unimportant place.

And then if we look closer still, the whole thing becomes bizarre, because that baby lying in the manger, swaddled and helpless, is none other than God. The almighty, ever-powerful, Creator of the heavens and the earth, chose to give it all up to live with us as a poor peasant from Palestine. God in the manger doesn’t just show us humility; it shows us that no part of life is too small, no person too ordinary, for God to transform it into something sacred.

God takes unimportant people, an overlooked place, and weaves them together in ways we never expect to create something remarkable—Jesus Christ the Savior of the World.

The good news of Christmas is that God does the same with us. Like those sculptures made of discarded toys and plastic, God takes the scattered, seemingly insignificant pieces of our lives—our routines, our mistakes, even our struggles—and transforms them into something beautiful and life-giving. In the people we overlook, in the places we least expect, in the seemingly unimportant days after all the gatherings and festivities, the Christmas story tells us this is exactly where God chooses to come among us.

In our rising and our resting, our labor and our leisure, there is more than what meets the eye. God is in the faces we love and the strangers we meet. There is hope in the children we care for, grace in the routines we endure, light even in the darkest places.

The Christmas message comes to tell us that how we see this life of ours is all wrong. What we take to be unimportant or worthless is really beautiful and purposeful because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger. Beauty in routine, strength in weakness, meaning in the mundane.

The gift I pray you receive this Christmas is a new perspective — to step to the side, to come closer and to find God’s grace in the routines and messiness of your life. Because the good news is this: God is already there, waiting to transform it all into something beautiful. Amen