Luke 2:8 20 If you were making up a list of people to receive birth announcements and the baby was royalty, who would be at the top of your list? If you were sending a group of special representatives to make a personal announcement, where would you send them first? What if the group you were sending was a vast multitude of angels? It doesn't take much thought to realize that God's priorities are not the same as ours. Unless you were a shepherd, that would probably not be your first choice. Maybe in that thought lies the answer. King David who was a shepherd himself, said in Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd. Jesus referred to Himself as the "Good Shepherd." He said that the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. Do you suppose that God may have thought that these of all people would be able to identify with a shepherd's heart? It's like God is saying, "You know how your sheep need you to survive, they have no direction of their own, they are so weak and vulnerable. My sheep are the same way. I love them and they're dying, so I'm sending My only Son so that He can be their Shepherd. He'll have to lay down His life for them. Can you feel My aching heart? I want you to see Him, I know you'll understand." I don't know whether they understood or not, but they went. Who could God tell that could ever understand? The angels certainly could not, they were created to obey without question. Only a person that had been created to freely have companionship with God, and then only one that had the capacity to have compassion toward a helpless creature, enough compassion to lay down his life, if necessary, for that creature. "Maybe they will understand."

The Shepherds First