Have you ever worked a dumb job? A job where you know what you’re doing has purpose, but you ask yourself constantly why you’re doing it? We’ve all worked jobs that feel long, dumb, and boring. The biblical experts on these jobs are shepherds.
On the third week of Advent, we celebrate the virtue of joy. Advent wreaths have a pink candle, known as the Shepherd’s Candle, to remember joy.
Shepherding was an essential part of ancient Jewish culture. Sheep provided ancient families with income, food, clothes, security, and a deeper connection to God through sacrifice. Shepherds were often the youngest boys in their families. Each boy would begin as a shepherd and pass down the not-so glamorous job to the next youngest boy when they were old enough to help their father farm. This continued until there was no other son to pass the torch to, making the youngest son the family shepherd, as in King David’s case. This seemingly dumb job was important but hard as it included a never ending caregiving to flock upon flock of dumb sheep.
The virtue joy is tied to the shepherds in the Christmas story because of the unspeakable joy they experienced at the birth of Christ. These shepherds were sitting in the cold at night watching over their flocks of sheep when out of the blue an angel appeared proclaiming the birth of a Savior (Luke 2:10-12). If that wasn’t crazy enough, shortly after, a whole host of angels filled the sky singing praises to God in the highest (Luke 2:13-14)! Talk about an unusual night shift! The shepherds decided they had to see what these angels were talking about and left all their sheep – yikes! – to travel to Bethlehem and see the baby. After they saw baby Jesus and His parents, they ran around telling everyone what they had seen and heard.
Yes, you heard that right. The Christmas shepherds left their entire accident-prone livelihoods alone for multiple hours to tell people about some strangers’ baby. What kind of baby could bring that much joy? Only Jesus.
It’s easy to feel like a lowly shepherd taking care of something you know is important but feels dumb and tedious. But because Jesus Christ has come to save, we have unspeakable, insurmountable joy in our salvation. We are saved from an eternity in hell because of Jesus’s coming. And, Jesus is coming again to forever reconcile us to Him and end sin, death, and the Devil for good. Praise God!
My prayer this Advent is that you would live in the abundant joy that Jesus Christ came and is coming again to unite us to Him and that you would let that truth bring unspeakable joy to every shepherd moment.
Songs of Victory
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