Counting the Days: December 7, 2025

Look Down

Jeremy Fiebig
Seminarian, Church Divinity School of the Pacific
Chaplain (CPE) Intern

Read: Luke 2:8-14

“A new and wondrous mystery: shepherds sing, angels praise.”
— John Chrysostom (unknown – AD 407)

The story of God with us begins in the dirt — on the ground, in the darkness, surrounded by animals. Human life, made in God’s image, emerges out of the stuff of creation. Light shows up in the dark. In these ways, Luke’s Gospel mirrors Genesis, showing again how God chooses the lowly, the earthy, the animal world as the place where glory shows up.

So much of the theology I learned growing up was about how great it’s going to be when God shows up — later. After we’ve lived a holy life. When Jesus comes back in triumph. “When we all get to Heaven, we’ll sing and shout the victory,” as the old hymn goes. But Luke reminds us that God doesn’t wait. God could choose to work only in temples and palaces, in the lofty heavens, or in our human measurements of success — glossy careers, winning tickets, championships, perfect health, or streets of gold.

Instead, both Luke and Genesis challenge us to notice that God’s work is happening now. Always now. In gardens and fields, among animals and people and labor — ours, the shepherds’, Mary’s. God’s intervention in the created world is always, always, always about normal people doing regular stuff and God showing up in and for all of it.

Embedded in Luke’s Incarnation story is the idea that if you want to experience the glory of God, you have to look down. To the dirt. To the work on the ground. To the baby in a trough. To the straw. To the animals. When we look down, glory shows up.

Prayer: Maker of Earth, thank you for thinking of us as so holy and worthy that you show up for us even here. Send your angels to celebrate every way you break in to our lives. Amen.