Read Luke 2:1-20
Of all the characters in the Christmas story, the shepherds were the most amazing to me. Why? Because shepherds were outcasts among the people they were considered “unclean” and therefore not welcome in the temple other than to bring the lambs to be sacrificed. But God used these “smelly people” as the first people to go and tell the “good news of great joy for all people.”
Having been inspired by a choir of angels, the shepherds left their sheep, walked a little over a mile to the city of Bethlehem, where they found Mary and Joseph and the Christ Child, lying in a manger, just as the angels said. The Scriptures do not say how long they stayed, but when they returned to their sheep, they glorified God for all they had seen and heard.
If God can use a band of lowly shepherds to proclaim the good news of great joy about Jesus, what do you suppose God might want to do through us today? Be that unlikely voice of God’s word to someone today!