Gritty Wonder: Christmas Through Fresh EyesSýnishorn

Shepherds

Apart from Jesus (naturally), the shepherds are my favourite characters in the entire Bible.

And no, not just because I always seemed to be cast as one of them in school nativities (was it too much to ask to be Mary, just one time?!) It’s because they show us so much about who God is and how He does things.

Let’s take a quick stroll down 1st-Century Lane for a moment…

Although many of the Jewish patriarchs were shepherds, and God is even likened to a shepherd from time to time, it has been regularly noted that shepherds around the time of Jesus’ birth were truly on the margins of society. It’s been suggested that they were often away from people for long stretches of time, tending to sheep that were almost certainly not owned by them. If this was the case, it was one of the lowest-paid professions with some of the most undesirable social connotations.

And, it seems, that made them the perfect audience.

God sent history’s most extravagant light show to the people the world ignored. He wanted the particularly marginalised, the continually overlooked, the chronically underestimated to be the first people to hear what had happened.

The shepherds remind me that because of Christmas, and the God who thought it up, the notion that someone can be ‘unseen’ is a total myth. Their night shift changed history, and they wanted people to know it. We’re told that they ‘spread the word concerning what had been told to them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them’ (Luke 2:17–18).

Not that I’ve been here a huge amount of time, but I’m not sure I’ve ever known a world that needs to know what the shepherds saw that night, and what it means, more than ours right now. There are people in your office, in your classroom, stepping foot into your coffee shop, hopping onto your bus, who need Christmas. And maybe, just maybe, that’s why they’ve found themselves there.

Christmas happened, and it’s still happening. It changed lives, and it’s still changing lives. Jesus came, and He’s still here. Why don’t we find a way to tell someone so? To introduce them to their God-With-Them? To show them that the gritty wonder of the Christmas story is everything they need to hear?

Action

Who would be the equivalent of the ‘shepherds’ in our society today? Which people groups tend to be ignored, overlooked, marginalised? How can we make sure that they have a front row seat to the real wonder of Christmas?

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More from LICC

This devotional journey was originally published as part of our Word for the Week blog series.

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