The Shepherds Went Back Praising

The sun is coming up over the hills of Bethlehem. The same hills. The same sheep. The same cold, wet grass. But listen. The shepherds are praising God.

It has been the longest, strangest, most wonderful night of these shepherds' lives. An angel in a blaze of glory. A sky full of heaven's armies praising God. A hurried search through Bethlehem's streets, and a baby lying in a manger, exactly as they had been told. Then hours of telling everyone they met, and watching people's faces fill with amazement. Now morning is coming. The sheep still need to be fed and watered. Someone has to lead them to pasture. Life has to go on.

Luke tells us: “And the shepherds returned.” They went back. They did not stay in Bethlehem to become famous. They did not move into the house to guard the baby. They did not set off for Jerusalem to tell the priests. They went back to their flocks, back to their jobs, back to the same hills they had walked a thousand times. That might sound like a disappointing ending. After angels, back to sheep? But Luke has not finished the sentence.

They returned glorifying and praising God. That is how they went back. Glorifying God means telling how great he is. Praising him means thanking him with joy. So picture them walking up the hillside in the early light, talking over and over about the angel's words, laughing, maybe singing the old psalms they knew. Every time a lamb wandered off, every time they lit the fire, they remembered. The work was the same. But the workers had changed. Ordinary days now had a song running through them.

And Luke tells us why they praised. For all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. Heard and seen. They heard the angel's promise. Then they saw it with their own eyes. Everything was just as God had said. Nothing promised had failed. That is what filled them with praise. God had spoken to them, the night shift, the overlooked, and then God had kept his word. Once you have discovered that God keeps his promises, even ordinary hillsides look different.

Shepherds in Israel had a special place in the scriptures. The most famous shepherd from Bethlehem, David, wrote the psalm that begins, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. And the prophet Ezekiel promised that God himself would one day search for his scattered sheep and look after them. Shepherds who knew those words might well have sung them on the hills that morning.

You'll find the shepherds' return in Luke chapter two, verse twenty. Same sheep, same hills, but changed men, praising God for keeping his word. So here is a question to carry with you. After Christmas, when life goes back to normal, how can you carry your praise into ordinary days?