Shepherds: The First Believers

No scene of the Nativity of our Lord would be complete without at least one shepherd and a few sheep, mostly lambs.  What makes this man of low estate and his wooly charges so important to the story that no matter what else is included, the shepherd is never omitted? 

First, what do we know about shepherds?  I don’t pretend to be an expert in sheep rearing by any stretch of the imagination, but I have in fact known a shepherd.  Well, not a real “shepherd” shepherd, but a gentleman farmer who owned sheep and took care of them on his estate.  This property was in Northern Ireland and was actually on a small island in the western side of Strangford Lough, uninhabited by predator animals such as those that threaten sheep in other places.  This “shepherd” entertained a group of friends, which included several of us Americans, with his stories of sheep as we traveled together to a convention for daffodil growers.  (Another story for another day) 

A Stable is the Perfect Place for a Child to be Born

This is a stable

Every Christmas we're inundated with comments from the pulpit (and websites and blogs) about how Baby Jesus was "born in a smelly stable", "born among filth", "born in a filthy stable", "born in a really cold dank smelly stable". I just want to jump up and cry, "WHAT are you talking about?! Obviously you have never even BEEN in a stable!"

It's evident that many of these priests/people never experienced the sweetness of a clean stable so how do they know what a stable is like? Several decades of my life were spent in barns—hunter/show barns, Thoroughbred race-horse barns, racetrack barns, sales barns, horse farms, cattle farms, sheep farms - and throw a few chicken sheds in there too.