A shepherds story

I’ve been asked to tell you about that night. You must excuse me as I’m not used to public speaking, as you know I’m just a shepherd, but I must admit us guys haven’t been able to stop talking about that night ever since.

It started off a fairly normal evening. We were up on the high pasture and it was a beautiful clear night. One of those nights out on the hills where you can just about feel God’s presence out there with my sheep and a few mates with their sheep too. My wife, Esther, often laughed as I went out the door ‘you prefer those sheep and those hills than my bed and the kids for company.” Truth be told I often did miss her and the kids, it could be lonely and cold up there, but this night I wouldn’t have been anywhere else, it was just one of those nights, hard to explain to you town folk really.

My mates and I all agreed we were glad to get out of Bethlehem, our hometown, that night. It was crowded out because of this stupid Roman census thing. Just so peaceful up here. Us shepherds confided with each other we felt much closer to God up here than we ever did in the hubbub of the Temple in Jerusalem. Those priests strutted about often arguing over some finer points of law. Seemed to us shepherds their only real concern, as my mate said, was to have control in their hands and their hands on our money. I guess I knew one or two good genuine priests, but they were vastly outnumbered. It paid to keep our feelings to ourselves though for our flock supplied many of the sacrificial lambs used at the Temple. My real hero of faith was King David, he had been a shepherd on these very hills hundreds of years before. Hard to believe really. Anyway……

We were all just relaxing, the day was done, and one of the guys had been quietly playing his zither and we had ended up singing our favourite of King David’s Psalms. ” the Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing, he makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters……….” Then we had all gone strangely silent. There was this bright star it seemed straight above us this night. We had noticed it before getting gradually brighter, for a few months now, but this night it seemed right there. You could almost feel it.

As we sat there all deep in our own thoughts my mind went back to last year’s Passover, about nine months ago now. I had often relived that weekend wondering what I could have done better. Bit of a long story, but that spring a young first lamber had had twins and couldn’t feed them both. I had taken the weakest down home and my daughter Miriam had fostered it. They became inseparable, Miriam named him Danny and he would follow Miriam everywhere through the village. In the end, Danny had to go back to the hills with the other sheep, and whenever she could Miriam would come out with me to meet up with Danny.

Unfortunately, Danny was a firstborn male lamb and so was highly prized by the priests especially for our Passover festival. I admit I fudged it a bit with Miriam saying Danny was off on a journey of a lifetime.

That weekend Esther and I, with Miriam, and Abel headed into Jerusalem to celebrate Passover and meet up with friends and family. The idea was to leave Esther and Miriam at my cousins while Abel and I would go onto the Temple. But my worst fears unfolded. Around the street corner came some sheep herded by the temple servants. They were hopeless with the sheep. Anyway who should be among the sheep but Danny, and he and Miriam seemed to instantly spy each other. Danny bolted out of the sheep straight for Miriam, bleating all the way. One of the temple guys came rushing after him cursing, then dragged Danny back who was now really doing everything he could to escape. Miriam was inconsolable. She now knew what Danny’s fate was. I left her sobbing at my cousin’s with her Mum, Esther, looking daggers at me.

Abel and I went on up to the temple, I just couldn’t get into it. Lambs bleating, the blood, of innocent lambs, it all seemed so unfair to me on that day. Nobody seemed to care for the lambs, they were just “sacrifices” some meat. Yet I knew Danny was one of them. Danny, who was so trusting, so part of our family.

We left for home and picked up Esther and Miriam on the way. Miriam would not look at me, Refused to talk all the way home. I went in that night and sat on the side of her bed, she turned her back and faced the wall. I was glad in a way as how could I explain that Moses had asked us to sacrifice a lamb. It just seemed so wrong, cattle maybe I could understand, a bear or a lion that would be so much more dramatic. But a lamb that totally relies on our protection, is so vulnerable, so trusting. Just didn’t seem right to me.

Must admit, since that Passover I never went back to the Temple again. I just found I was struggling with the whole concept that an innocent lamb should have to pay the price for us to be rescued from slavery. My son Abel he loved studying, more like his Mum I guess, had his favourite teachers in the Temple, he rationalised it to me. But guess now my only place of true peace, and worship if you like, was out there on those hills where God truly did seem omnipresent. I was deep in my thoughts when………………..

When it happened a bright light shone down right around us. Then what I could only call an angel appeared, hard to describe really. It totally freaked us guys out. Then the angel said”fear not for I bring you good news and great joy for all people for today in David’s town a Saviour has been born to you. The Messiah, the Lord. And this is the proof you will find him wrapped up and in a manger.

Seemed so confusing. But then suddenly the whole of heaven opened up and we all saw a great choir of angels singing for all they were worth, seemed not just to us but to all of creation, the whole world, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom His favour rests.

We were stunned. We all looked each other in utter amazement and quickly decided let’s go down to Bethlehem and see this thing that the Lord has told us about.

When we got there we found it just as had been said, Mary the mother with the baby in a manger!

Made me realise God does work His purposes out even with the weak and vulnerable. Amazing.

Anyway, I can tell you each of us shepherds spent the next few days talking about nothing else but about all we had seen and heard. Everybody around town was amazed and wondered what it all meant.