Encountering Jesus I

The Christmas story raises one question that everyone in the whole world needs to resolve: What do you do with Jesus?

The shepherds had to decide. They heard the choir, they went to see the child, and then what? Luke 2:17-20 tells us,  "When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told."

The first thing they did was spread the word. They told people, a lot of people. And the story they told amazed everyone who heard it.

The second thing they did was go back to their lives. They returned to the flock and fields, and resumed their jobs guarding and nurturing the sheep.

But notice how they did it: Glorifying and praising God. The same lives, lived now in the sense that a momentous change had taken place. Sheep herding was a little different now, because they had been given a glimpse of God at work, by God himself. Of all the merchants and religious leaders and tradesmen who could have been the ones, it was the shepherds to whom God revealed the baby Jesus.

What do you do with Jesus? That's one good choice, and it's the one the magi took too, as did Simeon and Anna.

It wouldn't be a bad one for us either. Spread the word. And get back to work, doing all those things that people depend on you for, but with a spirit of gratitude. I guess in their own way the shepherds were wise men too.