Abbot Stuart at Mucknell has this on his homepage at their website:

"Could it be that we have an image, a picture, however vague, of what it would be like to meet Christ, and when we don’t find that, we fail to recognise him – just as people failed to recognise Christ in the person of Jesus 2000 years ago?

On the whole the religious folk didn’t recognise Jesus as the Christ; it was the oddest selection of people who did, people discounted by the respectable Jews: shepherds –who had time to ponder and wonder, the Gentile ‘Wise Men’ –who gazed at the stars with open minds ~ people who had no preconceptions of the Christ. These were the ones who recognised him first, and then those who were mad or out-cast, like the lepers and the prostitutes, folk who were rejected, not wanted, by ‘society’ - people who were forced to wonder what life was all about.

In a sense they were starting with a clean slate in a way we can’t as far as ‘what we expect’ goes. We have been conditioned to assume we know what we are looking for, but both the New Testament and St Benedict suggest that Christ comes to us in the ordinariness of life, inviting us to embrace ‘life’ and whatever it brings with generosity, compassion and an open mind and heart."

It seems relevant tonight.