I’m sure all Mary wanted was to be left alone, so she could rest after the birth of her baby. She sure wasn’t ready for any company, much less strangers, but not long after she gave birth and wrapped the baby in the special clothing she had brought with her, the shepherds came looking for the baby that the angels had told them about.
Shepherds lived with their sheep night and day, never shaved, seldom bathed. They were a rude, crude bunch of men. And they were wanting to look at her baby.
Can you imagine what it must have been like for Mary, a teenager, to give birth without her mother or other women relatives, with only Joseph to help her, in the unclean surroundings of a barn? When the time came for the baby to be born, they were far from home, in Bethlehem.
The story of the miracle of Jesus’ birth has been told again and again, but it never grows old. The angel Gabriel announced it to Mary, the lowly little virgin girl, probably no more than 13 or 14 years old, telling her that the holy Child born to her would be the Son of God.
In Luke 1:31 the Angel Gabriel said that Mary would “bring forth a son and shall call His name Jesus. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest.”
An angel told Joseph, her fiance, in a dream to take Mary as his wife, because the Child she was carrying was the Son of God. That could only mean one thing to Joseph, a Jewish man–this baby would be Messiah, the Christ.
The shepherds told Mary and Joseph about the angels who had appeared to announce Jesus’ birth. In turn, Mary and Joseph had a story to tell the shepherd about angels appearing to them.
Because Mary knew this Child was Messiah, she willingly shared Jesus from the moment of His birth, even with the lowliest workmen of society in those days, the shepherds.
Baby Jesus was not hers to keep. He had come for the whole world.