For Sunday December 11, 2022

Luke 2:9
Behold, an angel of the Lord stood before [the shepherds], and the glory
of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid.

A gospel group called The Williams Brothers had a hit with their song “I’m Just a Nobody.” It was about a down-and-out man who lived on the streets and spent his days telling people about Jesus. He was laughed at and harassed by passersby, but that didn’t stop him. The chorus of the song was his life message: “I’m just a nobody trying to tell everybody about Somebody who can save anybody.”

The shepherds in the fields outside Bethlehem might have felt the same way when the angels from heaven appeared to them: “Why did God choose us, a bunch of nobodies, to be the first to hear of the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem?” They were just a bunch of nobodies who probably later told everybody about the Somebody in Bethlehem who could save anybody. Why did God reveal Himself to shepherds instead of to important royal officials? Perhaps to signal the kind of King who was coming into the world: gentle and humble, a Servant-Shepherd who came to tend to God’s flock.

If you sometimes feel like a nobody, rejoice! God seems to gravitate to the nobodies of this world when He wants them to meet Somebody who can save everybody.

God uses men who are weak and feeble enough to lean on Him.
HUDSON TAYLOR

David Jeremiah, Turning Points with God: 365 Daily Devotions (Tyndale, 2014)
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.