Dear Shepherds

What was it like in Bethlehem,
after the sky ceased to shine,
there was nobody left to tell,
and the flocks needed a new pasture?
What was it like to hold such news
in your hearts, in your community;
to receive a tiny, infant Messiah?

What did you do the week after?
You went back to work, I assume,
days slowly resuming their routine.
You were changed, yet still excluded,
the messengers of God’s messengers
sliding back into obscurity.

Two years later, He was gone
to escape the coming sword;
no angels came to bring you further news.
Did faith flourish or flounder in the fields of Bethlehem,
how did you hold on to hope?

Thirty years on, do we find you at the Jordan,
washing clean in preparation?
Did you yearn through all those years,
taking up the mantle of Anna and Simeon?

You witnessed to God’s faithful fulfillment,
then found yourselves back in the fields
waiting for Messiah to grow up.

Reading between the lines, I wait with you,
holding hope in the tender arms of patience:

He came, He died, He rose; He will come again.

Scripture only tells us about these shepherds once, in the second chapter of Luke’s gospel. In a recent Bible study, I was struck by the strangeness of going back to normal life after such an experience. Yet the shepherds and folks in Bethlehem must have done so; the Messiah was only a baby after all!

Jesus’ birth opened a new chapter in human history, giving urgency to the promised restoration of God’s people, but it still took 30 years for Messiah to begin his public ministry. In fact, this restoration is still unfolding today, thousands of years after his death and resurrection! God’s Kingdom is at hand, yet we wait for the fulfillment.

But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children,including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.) – Romans 8:20-25 (NLT)

The stanzas in this poem count down as we anticipate alongside the shepherds, but the poem ends with both fulfillment and our continued longing. Celebrating Advent each year helps us remember that we are still waiting, even as we thank God for what is already done through Jesus. All people who suffer because of the evil at work in the world, all of creation in its death and decay, all the broken corners of our lives yearn together for complete restoration.

The shepherds told everyone around them that Messiah had finally come, because he had! Then they faced the task of waiting “patiently and confidently” to receive the reality of Messiah’s life, including a death and resurrection they couldn’t have anticipated. We wait today, learning through Holy Spirit to receive the reality of God’s restoration, which was accomplished through Jesus and will be perfected in his return.

Christ is with us in the waiting. Merry Christmas!

©2024 Jacqueline Tisthammer. All rights reserved. 

Photo by Jaka Škrlep on Unsplash