There is a field I pass on my way to work. It changes season to season but always captures my interest and imagination. It is spring right now and the field is packed full of beautiful, vivid yellow flowers. Passing this field literally takes my breath away and makes my heart begin to beat faster. I become a worse driver when I see it. When I pass this field, I check my rear-view mirror to make sure no cars are behind me and slow down to drink in this field of glory. This morning when I did this, six geese flew silently over the field, filling me with unspeakable joy and wonder.
Passing this field of glory, I am reminded of another; an ordinary field occupied by shepherds living their work-a-day routine, guiding, watching over, and tending a flock of sheep. The shepherds were probably tired, hungry, bored, and possibly a bit chilly in the dark night air. In the world’s eyes they were nobodies. They had no status, no power, and we would not even remember they existed, except for the fact that the field was transformed by God’s glory and these poorly clad, poorly regarded shepherds were visited by an angel, told the news that a savior was born for them, and called to share this message of great joy for all people.
Entrusting this wonderous message to some lowly shepherds in the quiet of night speaks volumes about Christ’s entry into the world and about how we might receive him. The shepherds did not come to know of God’s glory through status, education, social connections, power, or influence. Instead, God’s glory came to them as they walked through their ordinary lives marked by simplicity, silence, emptiness, poverty, and anonymity. God visited the shepherds in the very places we try to avoid, our places of need, the places we do not control, the places of darkness in our lives, and the places where nobody notices us. We run from the places of darkness, uncertainty, and silence within us to lighter pastures where we experience our own competence, power, and control thinking we will find God more fully through our gifts and talents than through our poverty and anonymity. But as we run to the places we control; we miss receiving the gift God gives to us in the quiet night fields of our hidden lives where Jesus is born in the unseen mangers of our hearts.
The experience the shepherds have in that field transforms them. They leave the field to seek out Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus, share the message they heard from God, and then return to their field of sheep. Though the shepherds return to the same field they are not the same. They are now people of deep prayer, people who praise God from the roots of their being. The field they work in still gets dark at night, but the memory of the way the glory of God shone all around them remains and changes their darkness to the place they welcome the light of Christ.
That night, the shepherds heard heaven singing,
Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.
Luke 2:14
This song can still be heard today. We are called to listen for it. We can hear it in quiet nurseries when rocking babies to sleep in the middle of the night, we can hear it as we sit with a loved one who is dying, we can hear it beneath our feelings of loneliness, uncertainty, and rejection. And we can hear it when we pass fields of gold alive with the glory of vivid, yellow flowers singing silent songs of praise to God, the creator and the hidden ground of love.
