Shepherds' Response
In our closing prayer, on yesterday’s offering, this is what we asked of Father God. Grant us response, please. Amen! We had asked for the same response of the shepherds, who had heard and seen God’s heavenly and divine display.
As we listen again to the shepherds’ response, may greater, even deeper and more grounded hope and trust come to life in each of us. May we be left with no choice, but to bow lower in adoration and praise to God. May we, with ever increasing, disciplined minds and hearts, receive and cherish God’s Advent Word and Way.
Attend again to the response of the shepherds, as recorded in Luke 2: 15. When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.
I confess that my thoughts were always of shepherds, all huddled together in one spot, speaking to each other and saying that they should go and see what they were just told about. But, as I was being taught on this, as I stated earlier, about my mind being, ‘stretched out’, I was taken from my limited thoughts, my human reasoning and boy what expanding and fuller hope was being borne in me.
May God, the Holy Spirit, enter us and move us from where we are, to receive more and grow more in Him. Amen!
I was told that shepherds in their fields, men, who were not necessarily together as one party, had the same, one response, to their same, one hearing and their same, one seeing.
Nonetheless, as if God knew that I would want to pick at this and perhaps spend time in uncertainty, no matter how small, He brought this life-fact before me. Even before I share this with you, I know that it will bring nods of approval and the desire to be given the heart and mind to be even more deeply steeped in faith and trust in God.
I was reminded of a situation, when there was a loud bang and the voices of people screaming and crying out was heard. All of us, inside the house, as if we said to each other, let’s go and see, yes, everyone ran out at the same time, to see what the commotion was all about. When we got there, to the scene of an accident, where a maxi-taxi, filled with passengers, had flipped over, there were people gathered from everywhere. People from the same street on which we lived, people from way down the street, people from way up the street and people from many streets away, came running. It was as if we all had communicated with each other and said, let’s go and see what the scary, loud noise and screaming people was all about.
Here is the point. We were all gathered at the scene of a horrendous accident, because, from our various places, doing our various business, we all heard the same noise and all of us made the same response. Within our hearts and minds, we had all said, “Let’s go and see!” You may think and say that this was a human response. I totally agree, for this is a human fact with many people. This is precisely why we can believe that the response of shepherds in fields, people not necessarily together, side by side, can display one spiritual response to the same, one heavenly experience. Is that not God? Is that not hope for you and me, in this time, here and now?
Is this not time to gather up our faith, trust and hope in a Given Saviour, One who has been born to us, and in heavenly, Spirit-engendered response, leave our strivings, and go see for ourselves what it is all about?
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