You are a shepherd. In society, among the lowest of the low.
You spend your days and nights in the company of… sheep. And other shepherds.
You sleep in a gap between the protective layers of the sheepfold; you are in fact the gate to the sheepfold and that means you spend every night on the ground.
In the cold.
In the rain.
Among the sheep… and the other shepherds.
It is not a glamorous job. In fact, if a shepherd was offered just about any other job, he would probably take it.
One night, you and your fellow shepherds - and of course the sheep - are trying to get some rest for what promises to be another arduous day of herding and caring for… sheep - some of the dullest and annoyingly clueless animals ever created.
When out of the night sky appears something out of a nightmare.
The skies open up, night is turned into day and this… this… this… person a really, really big, well kind of like a person appears in midair. And all around him is this… this… this… light, but really, really unnaturally bright and all-encompassing light is all around this… person.
So you do what any rational shepherd would do; hit the ground and cry for your mommy.
Well, the Bible doesn’t give that detail, but in Luke 2, which we often call the Christmas story, it does say they were afraid. As in, really, really afraid.
Wouldn’t you be? This person is an angel and he does a lot more than go “bump” in the night. He’s big and awesome and he’s just traveled from heaven and all, so yeah, this is out of the ordinary.
But his first words are “Don’t be afraid.” He has good news; really, really good news.
A Savior is born. His name is Jesus and you guys tending these really dull sheep might want to run to town and check him out.
And as the angel is wrapping up this little huddle, all heaven breaks loose.
Luke writes, “Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host saying: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, and goodwill toward all!’”
This rendering is pretty good. (above)
But magnify this by a factor of ten, and you might get an idea of the awesomeness of such a moment. Truth is, the reality defies adequate description, but it will have to do.
Now consider for a moment what this really is.
Understanding that you may be reading this and you find the entire story of Christmas and perhaps even the existence of a loving Creator God implausible, suspend your doubts for a moment and consider…
We talk about things being heavenly. “This dessert is heavenly.” “Oh, you look heavenly.” “This vacation spot is heaven.”
We can’t help but talk about heaven even if we really don’t contemplate it as a real place.
But every time we invoke heaven in the context of something so out-of-this-world wonderful, do we really want to come back to Earth?
No.
You go to a vacation paradise, and coming home to the drudgeries of life and work can make you sad. You really didn’t want to leave paradise, did you?
But in the scene of the host of heaven - in other words a lot of angels - they do leave heaven, albeit briefly, to tell us mere mortals that God has intervened in human history to send His Son to take the form of a person and one day save us from our sins.
In so doing, those who acknowledge this fact - that Jesus is the Savior - will spend eternity in the very same heaven those angels know so well. In fact, they know heaven in such a way that they are thrilled beyond measure to leave it for just a few minutes in human history to tell a bunch of stinky, lowly uneducated human beings that heaven is real, and you want to be there one day. And the Person who can make that happen was just born.
Consider further that these angels know no other experience but being in the everlasting and joyous presence of God - all the time up to now and forever without end. They are already in the presence of God, they have no need of a Savior, and they probably can’t relate very well to these odd humans living on a tiny dot suspended in the universe. So amazing is their existence they parade joyously to the skies over Bethlehem to essentially say, “You have to be there, you simply must experience pure…heaven; one you really never will leave. Make your reservation; there is no better place.”
And they’re right.
“Gloria in Excelsis Deo…”
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