It’s the first Monday of 2025.

Kids in the US and elsewhere are back in school. People who took time off for the holidays are heading back to work. People who are retired are a little relieved that all those people are back to their usual rhythms. Those of us who have worked through the holidays are ready to be annoyed by the people who say, “how was your break?”

And the good news of great joy which was to be to all people is long gone. It’s been replaced in our attention by the anxiety and the death and the noise.

The family of shepherds who heard angels and left their flocks and went to Bethlehem also went back to their sheep. Mary remembered their visit, but we have no record that they did.

Because nothing happened for them.

For another three decades, they would not have heard a word of that baby. When the word of mouth started reporting on him, there may have been little to connect the angels and their message to this disrupter.

He did, of course, tell stories of shepherds and sheep.

Going back to work, going back to school, going back to routine, isn’t bad. We need it. If we spent our lives pursuing spectacle, pursuing distraction, simply pursuing, the sheep would wander.

And Mary, who pondered, didn’t wander. She raised Jesus. And his half-siblings. She directed, she scolded, she fed, she loved.

And perhaps, when Jesus had thoughtful, compassionate conversations with women, Jesus was reflecting what he learned from thoughtful, compassionate conversations with his mother.

In this new year, if we need to make resolutions, we can commit to care for the sheep in front of us, to care for the babies in our houses. And to ponder more than pursue.