I was struck recently by the lyrics in a song called 'Mirrorball', by Kathryn Williams. She sings: "I was searching for something Divine, and ended up making the mundane into my shrine." As I listened, I was retouching a photograph—a typically mundane scene that I’d captured somewhere on the snowy streets of Moscow.
I had just been questioning whether my photographic leanings tended to over-glamourise the mundane. There’s always a tipping point to what we treasure in these things; and always the danger of forgetting God’s creation and provision behind all things. He is more obvious to most on the high mountain view, but less easily spotted on the well-trodden path.
At Christmas, perhaps more than any other time, we are reminded that God choses the mundane. He enters into humanity in the person of Jesus—a child, like any other, in a stable, like any other, next to an inn, like any other, in a little town, like any other. And yet, He is not like any other—behind the mundanity, we are reminded with most powerful illumination that the creator and provider of this mundane but earth-shattering scene, is the one true living God (Isa 9:6).
The shrine we must repeatedly build is therefore neither the dramatic mountain-top view, nor the mundane street view, but rather it is 'the thing behind the view'—the person being pointed to through all of creation—the everlasting God. This truth is not lost on Jesus—He enters into humanity and His human frame never forgets the thing upholding Him—the empowering of the Father—from whom all authority in heaven and earth is given to Him (Mat 28:18). From the moment of birth, every view we have of Jesus is a gift that points us with clarity to the eternal, everlasting God.
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