He walks like he has a purpose but you’ve seen him around enough to know he has no job or family, except the dog he has on a leash, and no home to go to. He’s wearing all the clothes he owns but, even with that, the dog looks better fed than he does. He probably knows it’s Christmas, what with red kettles, street decorations, and the tree in the courthouse yard, but to him it’s just another day.
No matter the season, she always wears that stocking cap and a ragged coat. Moon boots that have seen better days, and red mittens. She pushes a grocery cart that’s piled high with stuff like blankets, a teddy bear that’s missing an eye and an arm, and a cowboy hat that could be any color under all that dirt. Her destination is the building on the corner where free noon meals are served, but the place is closed for Christmas so the volunteers can be with family. She lingers a while just to be out of the wind, then moves along before the cops come tell her to. Just another day.
The kid isn’t out of his teens yet but he’s old enough to carry a gun. He climbs over a pile of rubble and tries to get his bearings. Is this really the street he used to live on, and is there a chance that some relative is lying dead under the debris? The scream of a missile prompts him to seek cover. He’s used to that sound, or as used to it as one can ever get. Just another day.
She’s about five years old, wearing a purple jacket, crying, and wandering next to the fence. She’s hungry and scared. The people that brought her here have disappeared, and she doesn’t know the words to answer the man in a tan uniform who keeps asking where she came from, even if she could understand his language. The man finally takes her hand and puts her in a pickup that has writing on the doors. “Another one,” he mutters. “Just another day, but Lord, how many times can a heart break?”
Her cloak is wrapped tightly to ward off the chill of oncoming night. The donkey shifts under her weight; he’s as weary as she, after just another day of travel. When her husband reappears, he shakes his head. “No room,” he says, “but there’s a clean stall in the stable. We’ll have to make do there.” Perhaps the innkeeper’s wife will have mercy and offer to help with the birth, God knows, he has no clue how to go about tending her needs.
The homeless we have always with us. The babe born in that stable will grow up to have no permanent home. He will sleep in the desert, in a vineyard, on a lonely road side, or if lucky, on a borrowed mat in the house of friends. He’ll travel around touching the sick, consoling the lonely, and feeding the hungry. There were no ordinary days for Him.
Some of us will celebrate His birth on this day. For many others, it’s just another day.