Reprint:Shepherds Learn of Jesus

This is a reprint of a story I wrote on my other blog, In Love With Jesus Christ. It is a Christmas story written on the Scriptural account in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Feel free to look at other short stories in this blog, too.

Roger Harris]

“Winter is coming, my brother,” said the ten-year old shepherd boy to his older brother as they protected their small flock of sheep. “It’s already getting cold. I feel it is too cold to be out here.”

“Another week or two, then we’ll corral the sheep for the winter. It’s cheaper to allow them to eat the grass than to carry food to them for several months,” was the response from the fourteen-year old brother.

Ten-year old Ibrahim pulled his cloak more closely to his very slim body, unable to hold back some shivering. He watched the sky a while, got up and stretched and then told his brother, “I think I’ll take a short nap, if it’s all right with you.”

“Sure, go ahead. I’ll awaken you after a couple of hours to you can relieve me while I sleep a little.”

The boy spread an old tattered blanket near his big brother and slowly found a comfortable spot. He looked over the rolling countryside, looking at the campfires of several other groups of men and boys watching their own flocks of sheep.

“Wish I could be a sheep,” he whispered to his brother.

Looking astonished, the older boy asked, “Why would you say that? I think it’s silly to want to be a sheep or any other thing besides what we are, Israelite boys with some sheep to sell in the spring.”

“Look at them,” the younger responded. “They aren’t shivering in the cold. They have heavy wool coats to keep them warm. They don’t have to work, just eat and sleep. They don’t even worry about where their food comes from. They trust us to keep them fed and watered and even to protect them.”

“True,” smiled his brother. “Still, we have the ability to think, to try to improve our lives and to trust God for our needs.”

“Yeah, God is taking care of us, just as we take care of our sheep.”

“Only better,” the older added. “We are mortals. We have our limitations. Sometimes we don’t see a problem until it is too late, until one of our precious animals has been attacked. God knows what dangers are present, things that we don’t know anything about. Our God watches over us much better than we could ever watch over our little flock of sheep.”

“You know, I sometimes wonder if the things that the scribes teach us are really true.” It was Ibrahim speaking.

“You are being improper, Ibrahim,” scolded the older boy. “You must not talk like that. It is against our teachings to question the scribes.”

“Just consider the things they teach us, the miracles of Moses, the feats of King David hundreds of years ago, even the Garden of Eden,” Ibrahim reasoned. “Why don’t we see the same things in our own day? Why do the scribes tell us that we are God’s favorite people when we can’t even have a king of our own? Why is Rome sending people to rule over us? Why don’t we see great things happening, things such as the parting of the sea or the pole which becomes a snake? There are lots of things that sound like Grandpa’s talk.”

“What do you mean? What is Grandpa’s talk?”

“You know. Grandpa tells stories that are kind of hard to believe. He even tells predictions about the future, predictions which have been around for centuries and have not ever happened.”

“I think you are doing too much independent thinking, Ibrahim,” his brother scolded again. “Our duty is to accept the teachings of our religious leaders without questioning them.”

“How about the…?”

“Just go to sleep, brother,” demanded the teenaged brother.

Ibrahim rolled over onto his side and pulled the old blanket up around his neck, closing his eyes. He reached over and patted his older brother on the knee, saying, “Don’t let me sleep too long. You need to sleep, too.”

Soon the heavy breathing signaled that Ibrahim was beginning to sleep. The older boy continued to watch the sky, to look over their little flock and to add some sticks to their small campfire. His facial expression changed a bit when he thought he saw a shooting star far over the horizon. However, this star did not fade away in a couple of seconds as shooting stars always do.

The older boy noticed that a few other shepherds from the other flocks stood up to see the same star that he was watching. Although he could not hear their words, he heard some of the shepherds talking about the star. They were pointing toward it. More and more shepherds began to notice the star. It seemed to be getting larger and brighter, as if it was coming closer to them.

He noticed that the noise of the sheep had diminished and finally became quiet. That was unusual, hearing no sounds from the sheep, even in the nighttime. He stood up to try to see the light better, deciding that this was not a shooting star at all. It was too bright and clearly approaching them.

Ibrahim also woke up, noticing the unusual quietness of the night. “Is something wrong? I don’t hear our sheep bleating.” He looked toward his standing brother and then looked in the direction of the light.

Suddenly, the bright light was upon the whole area. The little town of Bethlehem, their hometown, always had a few visible lights at night that the shepherds could see. Now, however, the town was lighted up, not by the lanterns and candles but by some strange light from above. It was not the same as sunlight, not at all. They had never seen a light of this type before.

“Don’t be afraid.” The voice seemed to come from the brightness above and around them. “I am bringing you good news. It is the news that you have heard for centuries. The time has come for the Savior to be born. He is the Christ Who has come to save all people.”

The voice, though very strong, did not scare them, especially after hearing it say that it had good news. Ibrahim, like the other shepherds around this rolling countryside, did not know what to do. Should he stand or lie down or kneel? Should he try to speak or only listen for more messages from the light?

In a few seconds, the light seemed to form a shape. It looked somewhat like the figures of cherubim, the type of angels which had decorated the Ark of the Covenant, which nobody knew how to find any more.

Ibrahim’s brother said, “It’s an angel! They’re real! This is an angel!”

Again, the angel’s voice came loud and clear. “You will find this Savior in the form of a baby, a human baby. He is now in Bethlehem, the city of David, which is where the prophet foretold to be His birthplace. He is not in a palace but in a barn with a manger as His bed.”

As if this were not enough, quickly the people on the hillsides could see many, many more angelic type of creatures in this strong light. There were far too many to count. They also began speaking. Although each of them was speaking, their message was clear, “Praise and glory to God on high. He declares His goal of peace with mankind. He has good will toward men everywhere.”

In an instant, the angels were gone, and the light disappeared. It took a while for the men’s eyes to adjust again to the darkness of the night. The sheep again returned to their animal sounds. Things seemed just as they had been before the light and the angels.

Commotion became rampant. Various shepherds left their flocks to go to talk to a neighboring shepherd about this happening.

“My mother told me to stop drinking while tending the sheep,” said one of them. “Now, I’m seeing things and hearing things. I must stop.”

“It’s not the drink, Josiah,” said another shepherd. “This is real. Maybe someone can try to watch all of the sheep so the rest of us can go to Bethlehem to see the baby.”

After some time, they arranged several shifts to watch sheep while others went to find the baby. They agreed that the ones who went first would come back and let the others go to see Him if they wanted to.

Ibrahim was in the first group to go search for the new Savior in the little town. “May I take some kind of gift for Him?” he asked his brother.

“I wish we had something to give,” the brother agreed, “but all we have are some sheep.”

“I will go to see the baby. Then, when I get back here, we will decide about giving Him something,” Ibrahim suggested.

Ibrahim and the others in the first shift to go seek the baby wandered through Bethlehem. It was a small town so the search was not as hard as they imagined. The angel had told them that the baby was in a barn. Only one barn seemed to have any light in it.

With permission from Joseph, they entered the barn and carefully looked in the manger. He looked like any other Hebrew baby, very much like the younger brothers or sons that some of the shepherds had in their own homes.

After talking with Mary and Joseph, the parents of the baby, they returned to the fields so that another group could come and see the baby.

Ibrahim’s brother was very excited when the group returned to the fields. However, he was upset that Ibrahim was not among the returnees. One of them told him that Ibrahim was so impressed that he want to their father’s house to tell the rest of the family about this that they had witnessed. “He will be back soon so you can go to see Him, too,” one of them told the teenaged boy.

Finally, Ibrahim returned to watch the sheep so his brother could go to see the baby. “Here, take this to give to him,” said Ibrahim. It was a shiny metal pendant that Ibrahim had won in a contest a few years earlier. “I can’t think of any other thing to give Him.”

None of the shepherds slept much that night. They talked among themselves, comparing observations and opinions. It was clear, however, that all of them had become believers in the “grandpa talk” and in the miracles that they had heard about.

In the next days, people from Bethlehem searched the rolling countryside where the shepherds had witnessed the angelic presence and heard the announcement. Several people visited the barn in which the baby had been born. Mary and Joseph and the baby were no longer there after Joseph took care of the taxation affairs which had brought them to Bethlehem in the first place. They had returned to Galilee.

People from the little town of Bethlehem were largely changed. Some skeptics remained, but most of the town felt that the shepherds had really seen angels and heard angel voices that night. Most of the shepherds seemed different after that night. Drinking and swearing became things of the past. The shepherds became more serious, talking about eternal matters and spiritual matters. The scribes in the little town noticed, too, that there was much more interest in their sermons and their teachings from the writings of Moses and the prophets.

Regardless that the baby was not heard from for many years after that, the men who had witnessed this event were changed. They cultivated spiritual conversations and spent much time listening to the reading of the old scriptures. Many of those shepherds died before Jesus of Nazareth became such a popular figure about thirty years later. Ibrahim, however, did get to see the baby in His years of popularity. He spent much time listening to Jesus’ sermons and trying to understand His teachings.

“I could feel the love that the angels had for the Savior Baby that night,” recalled Ibrahim as he told his own children about that night. “They clearly loved Him very much. Now that I have heard His sermons a few times, I feel a closeness to Him, too. I remember what He once said, that He was very approachable and lowly in His own heart.”