I Was There!

I remember that night so vividly.                   

Of course, with what happened later,

it would never have been forgotten,

but it was… it was so many things that happened.

It was the first night

that my father had allowed me to come with him to watch the sheep.

I'd watched him go out day after day after day

and wanted all my life so much to be with him,

to go with that group of shepherds.

I figured that they must have all sorts of fun up there

 even though it's nighttime

 even though it's cold and wet

and miserable I'm sure at times

but I wanted to be a part of that group so badly.

So, when my dad said, “OK, OK, OK, tonight”.

I was so excited

and then he grabbed his crook

that he always took with him.

They all had them in case they needed them for the sheep,

and I begged, “Papa please, please, could I have a crook?

Could I?

Don't you have… isn't there an old one somewhere

that I could take

so that I too can be a real shepherd?”

“Oh,” he grumbled, “I think maybe, somewhere,

there's an old one that we got rid of

because it was beyond really being useful--

So here you are. Yeah, you can take that one.”

So here I was, one of the boys… no, one of the men

walking a little behind them.

They walked so fast to get out to pick up the sheep

 and then more slowly.

I listened to them as they chatted,

watching what they did,

 watching how they watch the sheep all the time,

 and then finally getting up to that place on the hillside

and settling the sheep down.

Man, those sheep never seemed to stop eating

and even though it's getting dark …

although that night,

and maybe it's just because it was my first night,

but the stars did seem somehow brighter than usual.

To everyone else it seemed like an ordinary night

but to me it didn't seem like an ordinary night…

and then suddenly it wasn't an ordinary night for any of us!

Suddenly there’s this bright, brilliant light in the sky!

It startled us all, terrified us.

And… and it looked like an Angel,

an Angel surrounded by this brilliant light,

and then, oh my goodness, we heard the Angel speak

How could that be?

And the Angel said

“Don't be afraid.

I bring you good news of great joy

that will be for all the people

Today in the town of David a savior has been born to you;

he is the Christ the Lord.

This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby

wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

What? A sign of joy for all the people?

And the news was coming to us,

was being shared with us,

and this baby was to be a savior born to us?

The Angel said, “to you”, as in “to me”. A savior for me?

And there's a sign that this Angel is giving to us, to me,

that we will find this baby in a manger.

Oh, we fell to the ground.

We're like, “Oh, this cannot be…

What do you mean?”

And then suddenly a great company of angels appeared,

and they're all praising God,

and they were all saying,

“Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace to men on

whom his favor rests.”

And then the lights began to dim

and fade away

and there we were.

This is God's favor resting on us,

but we’re like the lowest of the low.

We’re just shepherds.

We’re the people who look after other people's sheep.

We are not even…we have no value in our society,

and yet now God's favor is resting on us

and we are the ones he's given the sign to…

Wow!

So, the shepherds that I was with…

this motley group of men looked at one another..

wondered, asked what, what, what, what?

Then somebody said, “Let's go to Bethlehem,

let's go and see this thing that God has shown to us.”

Can you imagine? These men, oh man, who would never leave their sheep,

which they never before their whole lives had done or thought about doing…

And off they went, not slowly as they usually move

but they hurried

and I followed along behind them still clutching my crook

wondering, wondering, wondering…

And then we found this young Jewish mother and this father

with this little baby in an old barn surrounded by animals.

So, these were poor people too.

These were people like us.

They couldn't be in a house somewhere having this baby,

this newborn baby...

and so, we went in there,

and we gazed at that little face,

that face that somehow seemed to hold

a world of peace

a world of joy

a world of possibility…

He opened his eyes and gazed at us,

and that gaze was the gaze of love,

and somehow we knew

that this was bigger than anything we'd ever seen before,

and we just bowed our heads in wonder and in awe and worshiped.

And I wondered, I wished I had something that I could give him,

This baby that somehow was going to save the world…

And I looked at my hand

and I had this old, worn-down, broken crook…

the only thing I had,

 and I laid it on the straw beside him,

and I looked at him,

and I said, “Baby, this is for you.

Maybe one day you too will be a shepherd.”