Merry Christmas!

Going on a cross country trip, (which takes about half a day) I got to see a lot of rocky parched land. From the window of the passenger seat, it was my first time to really encounter the life of the shepherd.

The dirty unkempt creatures roamed around, and I couldn’t believe it possible for them to live off the dust covered weeds they were eating. Midst the heard, I could spot a red and white checkered keffiyah on a haggard sun weathered man’s head. In the distance appeared to be his dwelling, a tent made of various plastic tarps surrounded by piles of possessions that the years had brought around. Nearby children played with sticks and laundry hung on the line.

I’m guessing they were people uneducated beyond the trade of their father. I wonder what they know of God or what they talk about around the camp at night. Imagine such people on the night the angels sang. Probably not the men I would prefer coming to my child’s birth.

The shepherds are scraggly men, living in scraggly tents, with scraggly sheep, eating scraggly things.

Our Lord and Savior was born in a stable and was placed in a manger and was called the Great Shepherd! 

What could this mean? Jesus became a scraggly man to care for us his scraggly sheep while living in a scraggly place to become covered with our dust.

Technically I guess they were goat herders, but  I imagine not too far removed from a shepherd.

The shepherds life isn’t the restful, in green pastures, life as I pictured. Surely, Psalms 23 refers to the heavenly reality we await!