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I used to eat at Subway - often. It was part of my daily routine to order one of their chopped spinach chicken salads with all the fixings on top. On one particular day while going through my daily routine, a random-never-have-met-them-person in front of me paid for my Subway. At the time money was tight, and it was a quick splash of God's goodness in the midst of my daily routine (I certainly didn't change up my routine to get it).

In the Christmas season, we find that Mary and Joseph are thrust into the everyday-routine rhythms of life and faith:

  • They've taken Jesus home
  • Jesus is (no doubt) keeping them up throughout the night
  • Stumbling through their days half awake
  • They're certainly back to work and attending synagogue as a family

And now, as Jesus is 40 days old and they are just coming up for air from those brutal first two weeks of a newborn, they take him to the temple to give an offering and have Jesus "presented to the Lord." In the midst of their daily routine and these very everyday activities and rituals, God's goodness abruptly breaks into their world. The text says, 

"27 Moved by the Spirit, [a priest named Simeon] went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:

29 “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
    you may now dismiss[d] your servant in peace.
30 For my eyes have seen your salvation,
31     which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
    and the glory of your people Israel.”

Wow. Heavy words.

When we rest in the Christmas season, we remember that God can come bursting through into our worlds with his goodness when we least expect it and oftentimes in our already established rhythms and routines.

It's ok to have rhythms.

It's ok to have routines.

And it's ok when God comes crashing into them with a word for us from someone else.