Remembering The Shepherds

Today is known as Boxing Day to many people all over the world. In numerous places also, as is the custom where I live, Boxing Day is a Bank Holiday. I know that in places like Poland and Germany, Boxing Day is referred to as their second Christmas. Traditionally, Boxing Day was the day when peasants and the ordinary working-class population were given gift boxes, by their employers.  I found this most fascinating and extremely interesting, in light of the coming of God’s most precious Gift of Love, in the Coming of a Saviour. Will you hear again, what the message was to the shepherds and how this Gift of Love included you, me and every single person who would receive and believe? I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. Luke 2: 10b - 11

It has happened for them! Shepherds have left their places - their fields and their flocks – one most unusual and marvellous, God-transforming night. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. Luke 2: 8.

These outside dwellers, have left it all, to go to the nearby town of Bethlehem, to see it all. Has it ever occurred to you that regardless of how many shepherds were there in the fields, they all had the exact experience? Has it dawned upon you that these shepherds may not necessarily be of one family, one group from the same place even? All we are told is that they were shepherds keeping watch over their flocks. Does not the use of the plural form of the collective noun, flock, tell us that there were different shepherds with their own flock of sheep, caring for their own sheep? This is all bringing fresh, new and more spreading joy and hope to me. What about you?

This is what I mean. When we are given mind and eye to see, not just one field, but fields, not just one flock of sheep, but flocks of sheep, there is freedom expressed and exposed before us. Our Heavenly Father, Sovereign God, in His Supreme and Almighty power, chose to spread out the glad tidings of the Birth of His Son, to a wide area. For the first time, my mind has been stretched out, as it were. For the first time, I am not thinking of some small field, and one little group of homely shepherds. No! The bigness, vastness and wideness of the heavenly message, in all its splendour and with the glory which shone that night, in the fields near Bethlehem, was wide and bright and seen by shepherds in fields. Does not this bring hope? Does it not give a growth-spurt to hope?

Faith allows us the joy and utter freedom to see and know that the appearing of God’s heavenly angel, and the glory of God, which shone around them that night, was bright enough and wide enough to cover fields. All the shepherds, in the fields, heard and saw. Now if this is not hope, then I don’t know what is. Hope swells itself in many ways, into our longing, waiting hearts.  Albeit, I hold up the hope that regardless of our fields, Good News from heaven will reach us. God’s Advent Words and His Advent Glory still shines, so that in our different fields, we will hear and see. Is this not miracle? Miracle is God’s work, and He is our Working, Sovereign Father.

Holy Father, I ask for the humility and the wisdom, the strong, unswerving faith in You, to still be a God of Miracles. It is miracle that You, O Father God, should delight in making shepherds, ordinary people, with no claim of fame to their names, people, while living outside in the fields near Bethlehem, receive Your Good News. You had angels come down from heaven, heavenly messengers under Your orders, to come to earth, on a dark night, with the joyous News of Messiah’s Arrival. These simple, working folk, received it all firsthand. All Your plan and Your design!

Holy Father, our Father in Heaven, make me to come to know You again, as our Father who still wants us to know Your Good News, peace and glad tidings.  Grant me response please. Amen!