Day 3 – Where the Shepherds Worked

“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.” (Luke 2:8).
The job of a Shepherds was minimum wage job at best. They were so distrusted that a shepherd’s testimony would not be accepted in a courtroom. They were seen as considered con men or vagrants. In today terms they would be classified as vagabond, bums, homeless. They were on the lowest rung of the social economic ladder with little or no formal education.

With all of this being considered that makes this story all the more remarkable. To begin with they heard and saw the spectacular angelic revelation. Only to go to Bethlehem and find the Savior of the world in feeding—trough. Nothing about this story is exciting his birth and this revelation of him being the Savior of the world did not seem to go together. Yet there it was, all from the throne room of God.

That night in that little town of Bethlehem, only the shepherds and Joseph and Mary knew Christ had been born. 400 hundred years of silent. God now chooses to speak to lowly shepherds on a hillside outside the smallest remote village in Judea. This story wins nobody not the way it is being told. But it was His plan not ours, because if it had ours, he would have been born in Jerusalem, to a prominent family, celebrated by the high and mighty. With that no one would doubt that the Son of God had come to the earth.

But our way is not God’s way. He chose to reveal the news to the shepherds first. After their initial fear, they responded in faith. To Bethlehem they went and found the baby Jesus. Just as they had been told by the angels.

What did they do? They told everyone they met what they had seen and heard.

Would we have been this obedient, as they were? Would we have believed? Would we have gone to Bethlehem in the middle of the night? Would we have been as quick to tell the story? What the shepherds did, we all can do. You need no authority, no permission, and no special training to witness for Christ. Go and simply tell what you know to be the true. Talk about Jesus. Tell who he is and what he has done for you. Share your story and invite others to come to Christ.

Good news is worth sharing. That is what the shepherds did. That’s what all of us are called to do.

Give us the same faith of the shepherds so that we might    go and tell everyone about Jesus. Amen.