Presented to The Salvation Army Alberni Valley Ministries, 25 December 2022 (Christmas Day) by Major Michael Ramsay
Tonight, Last night, every night we have people
working 9pm to 9am – overnight - at the Emergency Weather Response shelter. I
don’t know if everyone here is aware that as well as all of the things that we
do here at Christmas time and year-round and all the things that we do down at
the Bread of Life and Kuu-us, The Salvation Army also runs the EWR shelter attached
to the Bread of Life building. We have just been authorized to turn it into a
permanent shelter too; so, in the next few months we will be doing renovations
and adding bunk beds, hiring new staff and all kinds of fun stuff… And last
night and tonight we will have staff, employees working there overnight.
Has anyone ever worked
an overnight shift? In my experience, they are not a lot of fun. In my
experience, they are not the shifts that people normally clamour for. In my
experience, anyone with any experience and education usually tries to be ‘promoted’
off the night shift. Sometimes you get some great workers for the overnight shift
– like we do here right now – but I think that is the exception, rather than
the rule.
These are the folks,
however, who God invited to Jesus’ birth: night shift workers! I do wonder whether
they walked off the job and left all the sheep to be eaten or wander away or
whether they came traipsing down to the manger with a whole flock or flocks of
sheep with them. And what would our team do? Would they just leave the homeless
people sleeping? Would they kick them out, or would they all come down to see
the birth of the Saviour?
Anyway, these shepherds
are working that night and this Angel, a messenger of God shows up – I am not
sure how many visitors they normally get during the night but this must have
been quite something.
It says this angel
appeared before them and then the Glory of the Lord shone all around them. Have
you ever seen the Northern Lights? I imagine it was somewhat like that. I
remember the first time that I ever saw the Northern Lights, we were camping at
Birds Hill Park just outside of Winnipeg, MB. It was really quite something. I
have seen pictures of the Northern Lights, I have seen paintings of the
Northern Lights, I have heard stories of the Northern Lights – but nothing in
my experience had prepared me for the appearance of the Northern Lights. They
were amazing. The whole sky looked to come alive. It looked at first like a cavalry charge of giant horses coming at me from every side. I was completely
in awe as I saw the sky come to life. Now imagine if when experiencing this,
when completely surrounded by and engrossed in this, you start to notice that these
lights aren’t just dancing lights, they are dancing angels, singing angels, a
choir of angels, messengers of God, backing up the message of God proclaimed by
the Angel who was speaking to these folks working the night shift looking after
possibly someone else’s sheep.
The Angel tells these
nightshift workers the Good News that the Saviour has been born and that they will
find the baby wrapped up and lying in a manger.
The shepherds are in
awe; they are afraid; they must be enthralled. They listen to the Angel Choir
that must have looked more brilliant than the Northern Lights and must have
sounded even better than the Northern Pikes. They listen to this choir sing
praises to God. When the angels leave, when the show is over, they decide to go
into town (hopefully with their sheep in tow) to find the Messiah, the Saviour
of the World, the Christ Child in a manger.
They had this special
invitation. They accepted this special invitation. They went. They saw the baby
Jesus in the manger. They experienced the baby Jesus’ birth, probably meeting
mom and dad and whomever else happened to be there by apparent accident and actual
design. They then go away and tell everyone they know, everyone they see, about
what they have experienced with the Christ Child.
2000+ years later we
are all invited to do the same thing. We are invited to experience of the joys
of spending time with our Saviour. We are invited to share the story we have
heard about the birth of our Saviour. We are invited to share our experiences
with Jesus our Saviour. My friends as I am sure the shepherds will never forget
the joy of the night that they met their Saviour, I trust that we will never
forget the joy of the night each of us met our Saviour and I hope and I pray
that this Christmas and this year upcoming we will be able to share that joy
with everyone we meet – so that they too may experience the joys of being in the
presence of our Saviour, the Saviour of the world.
Let us pray.
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