Morning Moments

Read Luke 2:8-14
The Night Shift

I love the way God does things and the little glimpses of truth He allows me to see for the first time regardless of how long I have studied. This is one of those glimpses.

I am up early 7 days a week. I usually go to bed early too and rarely take naps. It has been my habit for most of my life that when I wake, I get up. I refuse to lie there and toss and turn, so I get up and read or write or pray. This morning I had this passage on my mind and thought about the shepherds and all those folks who have worked through the night when most of us were sleeping.

Perhaps the difference is that a good shepherd would lay down his life for the sheep. Listen to that again - It did not say they would give their life, if necessary for the owner, but for the sheep. In most cases they did not own them, but they cared for them as if they did. Here they were out in the fields taking care of animals that belonged to someone else while their friends and families were confortable and safely sleeping.

All the time they were working, God was working too and they did not yet know that an amazing miracle birth was taking place while they worked. THIS child would grow to be for us what they were for those sheep; a SHEPHERD whose voice they recognized as we recognize HIS. They were "common" folks, not nobility, not royalty, not wealthy, not government officials, just common people. It is no wonder that it is recorded later that the "common people heard Him gladly."

Just a couple of other things about verse 8. They were in the same country - they were where He was, because He came to where they were. We can meet God because He came to our country (which ever one that might be). If we are to see God do anything in our lives, we must be where He is. We must get up and go to Him, who came down to be with us.

Then the verse says, "they were abiding...keeping watch." Remember what Jesus said in John 15? "If you ABIDE IN ME, and my words abide in you...." Then there is the word "keeping"; just as they were keeping those sheep, HE is KEEPING me. Hallelujah!

So today, as you and I go about our mineal tasks. let us be reminded that we are just ordinary people with an EXTRAORDINARY Shephed who is guiding us and guarding and growing us whether we are sleeping or waking.

PRAYER: Thank You Jesus!