Christmas People
My friend Cathie came up with a great Advent idea. I adapted it in my own style and here's the first installment:
My first people from the first Xmas: Begins 11/28
The Shepherds -- Why?
Like most other poor people they also have a job, albeit one that is scorned by their society as the lowest life form. Like today's homeless persons, they are outdoors in the cold, and have experienced loneliness.
Yet it was to these, the lowliest ones, that God chose to send His angels to announce the birth of the Messiah, and these same lowly ones were the first to visit the Child.
"Let us go up to Bethlehem and see...."
And so, let us "go up" and "see" as well.
Who would fill the role of the shepherds in today's world? Probably the homeless people. They often do not smell so good, and neither did shepherds. They know about the perils of the wolf of hunger and cold, and the predator who would take their very shoes. Shepherds sometimes fought wolves themselves. The homeless know about cold and hunger and being despised by society as a whole.
An interesting note about shepherds -- God did not choose as king one of David's brothers, who were fighting for "king and country" against the Philistines, but rather the youngest, the shepherd boy who came in from the field smelling of sheep, and probably with dirt on his face!