Christmas Characters: The Shepherds

Today in the theme of Christmas characters we consider the shepherds.

From the Magi, the rich and the wise, we pass to the shepherds. They were poor, illiterate and landless men, and yet it was to these country-folk that the Lord first announced the “good tidings of great joy”. God chose to pass over the theologians and gray beards of Jerusalem to come in the form of His angels to the hills of Bethlehem.

Why would God choose the simple and the poor to be the first to see His only begotten Son? There may be many reasons, but one of the simplest answers is that there are more poor than any other class of people on earth.

We in the West have little idea of what poverty means, but a trip across a couple of oceans to drop down, say in Mumbai India, would clear up any doubts in our mind about the poor and the conditions in which they live.

In His opening manifesto, Christ declared; “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach the Gospel to the POOR”.

In the shepherds, the poor of the earth are represented, countless millions of them. The Gospel message came first to them. And rest assured there is going to be a lot of them in heaven