If you asked most of the important or powerful people in the world circa 1 AD where the small Roman province of Judea was, they probably wouldn't be able to say. They certainly wouldn't have heard of the small village of Bethlehem. They would have been utterly shocked to learn that anything important or world changing could have come from such a place. If you asked any of the people staying the night in Bethlehem - a big enough crowd that a woman in labor couldn't find a single open room - if anything interesting happened on the night that Jesus was born, if anything extraordinary had happened, almost all of them would have said no. It was a silent night. Outside of a few shepherds no one saw a new star or heard choirs of angels. None of them knew that the Savior of the World had been born that night. For almost everyone on the planet it was just a regular Tuesday. How often in our own lives have there been days of sacred significance that for us were just a regular, silent night? How often have we sat through Sacrament Meetings or Sunday School lessons where choirs of angels testified of Christ and radiant light and truth shined down from Heaven but we didn't see anything and we didn't hear anything because we were too busy daydreaming about what we were going to have for dinner when we got home or planning out our week or just bored silly by all of the deafening silence around us? I hope that we are like the wise men and have eyes to see the signs of Christ coming into our lives and that we are like the shepherds and have ears to hear when angels testify of Christ and His power to save us. If we live worthily to have the Holy Ghost as our constant companion, then we never have to endure another silent night, devoid of all meaning, where we miss out on witnessing our Savior and all of His glory.
