Let's Leave Hawaii Present and Go To Israel Past --

    I should like to leave the beautiful islands of Hawaii this week with palms that have Christmas lights dangling from them and shirt-sleeved shoppers  and go to a time long ago.  This story is a true story --it happened nearly two thousand years ago.  The story is written in Luke 2:1-20 in a book called the  Holy Bible.  One account of the story as told by a shepherd who lived during that time follows below. I hope you enjoy it. It might have shown up in the Bethlehem Gazette, a newspaper, if they would have newspapers at that time, but they didn't --but work with me here!

The Shepherd Met the Lamb

     My name is  Eli  and I  want  to tell you about a  night on a  hillside outside of Bethlehem.  Shem, Jeremiah and I tended sheep together, because it is  a lonely, remote kind of duty. Sitting around  a fire, we  had talked about the  laws of God and how difficult it was to keep them all, especially as shepherds since we were away for weeks at a time. We worked  it out  occasionally, so one of us could go home. But as much as I missed my family I could not do it often, because my sheep listen best to my voice. 

       Back to my story. The fire had died down, and each man was lost in his  own thoughts.  Spontaneously, night turned into day and a man, I know now to be an angel, stood in the middle of the day spot.  He said, “Listen! I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.  For unto you  is born this day in the city of David, a Savior which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.”

                                                           From this darkness

The night was so black, Bethlehem seemed far off in the blackness.

                                                  To this light splitting the night !

   

     And if that wasn’t enough to blow our law-ladened brains right out of our ears , the sky was filled with as many angels as the stars, and they begin to sing, “Glory to God!”  Talk about a WOW night!  In a matter of amazing minutes this happened.  Then as suddenly as it grew light, darkness pulled the curtain of light back and blackness covered the sky once again.  

     We begin to chatter like a bunch of women at morning water drawing.  Shem said, “What do we have to lose? We believe in the Almighty and the promise of Messiah’s coming.  It has to be—he said a Savior which is Christ the Lord”.  So we left our sheep under the care of the Almighty and hurried to Bethlehem..We decided the baby and family must be at the inn, because Bethlehem is small and we knew every family expecting a baby.   Every alley had people sleeping in it because of the Roman tax census, but we knew where the only inn was and reached it. The place was in darkness when we arrived. We looked at one another. What now? Then Jeremiah, who remembers every detail said , “Didn’t the angel say we’d find the baby in a manger?” and we all thought the  unspoken question, “What in the world was the Savior, Messiah doing in a feeding trough?”

     We crept around the building and saw a small shed glowing sofly from a oil lamp.   

There before us, we saw Him, a tiny reddish-faced  baby with his mother and dad. All the Law and the Prophets I had learned as a child rushed back into my heart, “Unto a child is born, unto us a Son is given….” , “a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and call His name Emmanuel.” I fell on my face and wept . I shall never forget  the smell of hay and dried manure as  I worshipped Him that night. 

A manger where animals normally ate was the Baby's bed! 

     I went back to the fields a changed and refreshed  man, having been reminded  that the Almighty God even  cared about me.  Me,  the guy who could not keep all that rules.  Me, a smelly, tired shepherd had met the Lamb of God!