Prayer: Come, Lord Jesus, into our lives and into the life of Your world.
Scripture Reading: Luke 2:15-16
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has told us about.”
So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby who was lying in a manger.
Devotional: So the shepherds fulfilled the commission given to them by the angel and the heavenly host. What an act of God's Grace to have the birth of God's Son announced to them! But always with God's Grace comes a job – for God not only loves those upon whom God bestows Grace, that Grace always includes a job that affects humankind.
The shepherds leave the sheep and go to find the Christ Child. This was absolute verification of the angel's revelation, and was an essential aspect of their authentic witness to others about their good news.
When we share our experiences of God's Grace in our lives, we become effective evangelists for we embody the reality we proclaim. For the shepherds, it was as had been revealed to them. No longer a theory or theology or illusion or fabrication, this experience which had until then been visual and verbal was now confirmed by their own experience – Christ is born of Mary!
In the early church there were few, if any, forms of mass communication. News was, in large measure, shared verbally. Yet in about three hundred years, Christianity was the religion of the Roman Empire due to communication in the marketplace by Christians. They not only told the story of Christ, they told the story of their experience of Jesus Christ. That is still the most effective way to communicate the Gospel – sharing one's own experience of God's Grace toward us in Jesus Christ.
Maybe this season will provide each of us the opportunity to lovingly share our “experience” of Christ Jesus.
Prayer: Come, Lord Jesus.
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