Unexpected

It is easy for the devout to join up with the shepherds and fall into place at the crib and look out into the surrounding night and say, “Look at those silly intellectuals wandering about after a star, with no religious sense at all! Look at that clumsy camel, what an unspiritual animal it is! Look what odd gifts of self-consecration they are bringing; they’re certainly not the sort of people who’d make it in a church!” But we must remember that the child who began by receiving these very unexpected pilgrims had a woman of the streets for his faithful friend and two thieves for his comrades at the end: and looking at these two extremes let us try to learn a little of the height and breadth and depth of his love – and then apply it to our own lives.

- Evelyn Underhill