Every year, I write some sort of (hopefully) beautiful piece about what is currently inspiring me in the Christmas season. I’ve thought of it multiple times over the last couple weeks, feeling like I’d covered most of the things that came to mind. I’ve written about the camels, angels, shepherds, Mary, stable… What was really speaking to me?

I took some quiet time today to think about all of this. And my mind drifted until it found what I really wanted to say. I woke up this morning, feeling the dust settling after the excitement of Christmas day. I thought about how everything was going to go back to normal now. I no longer had any expectation to be excited or make moments special. Thoughts of work and responsibility drifted back into my mind slowly and I realized that average life was going to recommence whether I asked it to or not.

I thought about Jesus’ birth – there were so many prophecies. People waited and planned and hoped for that very day. The sky exploded that night with his birth. The mountainside stirred. The brightest star began to shine and lead its followers to the place where Jesus was born. He came quietly, but no doubt his arrival was felt across the expanse of the universe.

And then came the next day. And the next and the next. Jesus was born as a child – one of us, the Son of Man. He had to learn to walk and speak and crawl and fall and learn. He was born long before he would fulfill the reason that he came.

It’s a grueling process, you know, growing up to our calling. Nothing about it happens as quickly as we want it to. We feel like we’re stumbling around, wasting time. One day blends into the next and there we are, still growing. Still waiting. Still tripping and falling. Still getting up again.

When I think about the birth of Christ being the start of something great, I want to remember that the greatness also started with a thousand tiny difficult steps. Oh, to live my own life with the kind of grace and patience as that of a Savior who was born to save the world and yet waited for thirty long years to even begin that ministry.

Maybe some of the point of it all is that even the greatest thing started small. There was work and consistency. There was joy and relief. There was pain and dancing. There was all of it. For a long time.

Long before we knew what it was going to be, we waited. And we celebrated, even before it was fulfilled. Because we knew that something that started with such joy would end in even greater hope.

So as we go on to the mundane – the growing pains of our callings – let’s not lose sight of that hope. Let’s let it grow in our hearts. Until it is ready. And then, let’s let it change the world.

Even greater things. Amen.