Christmas Is For Everyone

I love everything about Christmas! I love the community spirit that comes alive for events in the park and parades down the mall at this time of year. I love the decorations, the lights, the tree and the tinsel. I love taking time to think about each significant person in my life and how I could blow their socks off with the perfect gift. I love the carols, I love the nativity story – I love all of it!

Each year, I find myself feeling amazed and filled with joy and wonder at the fact that the whole world stops to celebrate and remember the birth of Jesus- the moment in the stable, all those years ago, when heaven literally came to Earth.

Recently I have found myself with tears in my eyes as I have listened to carols in different places. Sometimes in church or at a carols service, but often playing in the shopping centres or other places where you would least expect to hear songs of worship- because really that is what they are!

One of the things we do as a family each Christmas is revisit the chapters in Luke’s Gospel that tell of Jesus birth. Even though I have read this story hundreds of times, it never gets old. This year, as I have pondered and meditated on the many facets of this amazing time in history, the people who have stood out to me the most have been the shepherds. Come with me for a moment and step into their world.

The Christmas story is set in the middle of a Roman census. Each man must return to his hometown to be registered by the Roman government (Luke 2:3). This is what brings Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, and why it is so hard for them to find accommodation- the town would have been buzzing with other returning travellers. Yet in the middle of all of this busyness, amidst the chaos of everyone heading home to be counted and reuniting with family in their hometowns...we find a group of people who stay away. The Shepherds.

Often when we see Shepherds in our nativity scenes they look pretty well put together- neat and tidy with flowing gowns and beautiful little lambs at their sides. The truth, however is that shepherding was quite a lowly profession in times of the Bible. Shepherds literally lived with sheep. Let that sink in for a moment. They were out in the fields all day, they slept with the sheep at night. I cannot imagine that they smelt very good at all. On top of this, shepherding was quite a simple profession- you did not need a university degree to tend to a flock, and often, people who could make a living doing something else, did so.

So here we have a group of individuals out in the fields tending sheep in the night. We aren’t given any information on their backgrounds, but I would bet that they had encountered some struggle in life. I would imagine that if they could have been home with family that night, they would have chosen to be, but they weren’t. Why weren’t they heading to their hometowns like everyone else? Perhaps they didn’t want to be counted. Perhaps they wanted to stay away. Perhaps they didn’t think themselves worthy of going home. Whatever the reason, whatever the story behind each staff that gently guarded the sheep that night, here they are, alone in the fields at night while everyone else travels home to be counted.

Yet, who did God choose to be the very first people to hear of the good news of Jesus birth? Who did He choose to announce the birth of His one and only Son to? Who did he choose to first reveal his rescue plan for all mankind to? And with a host of angles to boot!

These very Shepherds!

The one’s who didn’t count themselves as worth counting. The one’s who were close to outcasts in their society. The ones who simply watched sheep.

I love that God chose to visit the Shepherds. I love that from the very first moments that God became man and was born into this world, that His message was loud and clear:

I am for everyone.  I have come for everyone.

For the kings and wise men, and for the Shepherds out alone in the fields. For those who feel like they have it all together, and for those who don’t. This promise is for everyone, this hope is for everyone, this love is for everyone.

That is the story of the Shepherds. That is what their legacy, all these thousands of years later, still speaks today. The story of Christmas is for everyone. The hope of Jesus Christ is for everyone.

Wherever you find yourself this Christmas, I pray that you are encouraged by these words, and the story of the Shepherds.