We Will Often Find God In The Forgotten

​It was an ordinary night. They had no reason to believe anything meaningful was about to happen to them. They were tending their sheep, minding their own business, they were well away from the rest of the world where the rest of the world often liked to keep them.

These shepherds, who were often seen as unclean, untrustworthy, and outcasts in society.

These shepherds, their jobs hard, lonely, and largely thankless.

Yet it was these shepherds who were the first to hear the good news:

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

The angel said, I bring YOU - YOU shepherds - good news that will cause great joy.

Can you see this, can you feel this, God didn't make his grandest announcement ever in a palace or deliver it to religious leaders—it was given to ordinary, overlooked people.

Could anything more underscore God’s heart for ALL, especially those who often felt forgotten. Could anything more underscore God's desire to flip societal norms and forever put an exclamation point on how much God values humility and the inclusion of those often deemed “unworthy.”

And these shepherds, who could have rightly questioned - why us - didn't question at all. The bible tells us:

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.

SO THEY HURRIED OFF....

The shepherds didn't pack a few things. They didn't sit around and question why in a world where the people around them overlooked them would a God choose to shine a light of glory on them, why a God would overlook the 'important' and choose them as the MOST important.

They didn't question, they just HURRIED OFF.

But maybe we should question, maybe on our way to Bethlehem WE should ask, why God?

Is it because you want us to know once and for all that you are sending your most humble people to find the king of heaven, born into the most humble of settings, because you so deeply value our humility?

Is it because you want us always prepared to hurry off and find the value in the overlooked, because more often than not, that is where we will find YOU?

In the overlooked.

Is it because as we make our trek to Bethlehem you want us to be flippers of the scripts that keep our society looking at each other precisely upside down of how you look at us?

Is it because long before we get to Bethlehem you want us to hear from you what that baby in a manger would say many years later:

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

The meek.

God chose the meek, maybe it's time we hurry off to them too.