I have always thought it worth noting the people who came to worship Our Lord. First there were angels. They told the world that He was born, but who did they tell? They told shepherds. Shepherds were considered little more than criminals. They were unappreciated and extremely poor and thought to have deserved the lowly estate in which they lived their lives; yet the angels of the Lord “encamped around them” and announced to them, of all people, that the Christ was born! Not the priests of the temple, not the powerful. Shepherds. Dirty, smelly, humble shepherds. Our Lord loved shepherds. So much so that He calls Himself the Good Shepherd.
Also, the Wise Men were there. These were the astrologers of the day. They were also very rich. They studied the prophesies and knew how to discern the signs of the times and the signs in the sky. So we have the very poor and simple and the very rich and intelligent at the manger. What we don’t have are bureaucrats. We don’t have middle management. We don’t have the clergy. We have those who knew they were nothing and needed God to step in and tell them what was going on, and we have those smart enough to know that they needed to act upon their knowledge. It’s the ones in the middle that have trouble seeing what’s important. However, they are not to be blamed. It’s just that those of us in the middle are working so hard that we find it difficult knowing what’s really important. There is one thing that the shepherds and the Wise Men had in common. They both looked up- literally. That’s what we need to do. Look up. You will never stumble with your eyes on heaven.
