A Stinky Mess

I sometimes wonder what the lives of the shepherds looked like before the fateful night the sky lit up with angels. They were 3^rd shift workers in manual labor. Honest enough work but smelly and not too glamorous. Probably not the kind of work we would encourage our kids to get into these days.

It was the kind of work that disappeared into the background of a community. Most people probably went to a market to get wool, milk, or meat and never had to deal with long hours and achy joints and rancid smells that are a part of raising sheep. The shepherds probably didn’t get much thanks for their hard work. They were ordinary men with rather ordinary lives.

And then…

And then God decided they were going to be the first ones to know about Jesus. I’m sure Mary would rather have had her parents there or at least the wise men who had the sense to bring some nice gifts. I know when my daughters were born and folks came to visit us in the hospital we had no strangers and no stench brought into the room.

But Mary got the shepherds who made great haste in going straight from the fields to the stable. The stink and filth from the sheep lingered in the air everywhere they went. Any concept of “visiting hours” was thrown out. Complete strangers to Mary and Joseph, they come unbidden to worship Jesus.

The shepherds can teach us something about how we should come before God. Luke tells us that they “went with haste” to find their Savior. To make it clear, that means they show up at the manger out of breath, sweating, and still stinking like sheep. 

They show us that there is no time to clean up when you have a chance to meet Jesus. Give up all pretense of appearing decent and respectable before God. Just make sure you get to see him.

Often our hearts feed us lies about needing to look a certain way to be acceptable with others and before God. The truth is that God knows us fully and completely and no amount of washing can clean the stench of our sin. It is also true that in Christ, God sees us as being washed and cleansed and purified in a way that we could never accomplish on our own.

The shepherds teach us that we can bring all of our stinky selves to Jesus. Like the shepherds, we wait for a Savior and not for the time when we can get ourselves cleaned up. The cleaning we need is found only in Him. In this Advent season rejoice with the shepherds that our waiting is over. 

This Christmas go "with haste" to Jesus just as those shepherds did so many years ago.