I Heard It From a Shepherd


December 21, 2010

The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Luke 2:10

The shepherds returned. See, after seeing that things were just as the angel had told them and after they had satisfied their initial curiosity, they went out and told all their friends around town about what had happened. This was the biggest news they’d ever heard. I mean, it’s not every day that most of us have angels come down from heaven heralding the birth of the one and only Savior of the world. It was a pretty big day/night for these guys.

I love the fact that it looks like they went a bit crazy. Think of a junior high guy who’s on his third Monster of the day. They were pumped! This news was huge and they were aware of it and they appreciated it and they wanted to share it and they couldn’t get enough of it and they didn’t want to play it cool.

It’s stories like this that challenge me with how we worship God. I’m not just talking about the slower music during a church service (although that is definitely included, and we’ll talk about that in a second). I wonder why it’s so easy for us to play it cool when God does something awesome for us. I wonder why it’s so easy to think of what He’s done but then follow it, almost immediately, with a “yeah, but I’m still dealing with…”

It reminds me of the snotty-nosed little kid on Christmas morning who pulls the cover off the brand new bike he just got and says, “Oh man, I wanted the blue one!” It seems kind of natural in our day and age to always want more and never to stop to be totally blown away by what we have. God sent His Son to come into our broken humanity to fix it. He saw how messed up you would be today and did it all to give you a way out. He saw the world you and I lived in and gave us an answer to the problem. We can talk to Him and we can hear from Him. We have His Word. We have His Holy Spirit living inside of us. We have other believers around us who are there to encourage us. We have so much. And it’s all just as we’ve been told.

I think we’ve got something to learn from those shepherds. We need to get out and excitedly start spreading the word that a hero has come to free us and give us new life. This is truly good news!