The announcement of the birth of Jesus has significance for all of us.
The waiting is almost over. Before the week is out, we will have celebrated the Christmas holiday — with all of its traditional trappings. We will have sung the Christmas carols. Many of us will have had the good fortune to attend a traditional Christmas eve service. We will have opened our presents, and had our traditional Christmas dinners.
But for many of us, Christmas may seem like just another day. Many will be far from home and family. Because it’s a Saturday this year, many of us will find that we have to work. We may find ourselves in the middle of a crisis or just a struggle to survive. Even worse, we may find ourselves faced with grief and loss. To so many, especially those who may find themselves living at society's margins, Christmas might just seem like just another day.
So it was at the very first Christmas when Christ was born. It certainly may have seen that way to the shepherds in Judea who were out “keeping watch over their flock by night.”
Shepherds. Who were they? Well, they were people at the margins of society — being a shepherd was undoubtedly not an occupation that you wanted your son ever to do. It was a dirty job tending sheep. It was lonely — the shepherds were out in the fields — not having a…