A Night to Remember

When the shepherd went running off to Bethlehem in the middle of the night, I wonder it they just left the vulnerable sheep defenseless, or if they drew straws to see who stayed to tend the sheep.  I have always voted for one of them getting the short straw and having to stay with the sheep while the others raced off to see the one of whom the angels spoke.  Getting left is never easy.  It is not easy especially when you want to go, but most likely one of them missed out on the manger scene and only heard about it second hand.   

I remember a time years ago during my years at Asbury College when a group of us went out on a lay witness mission.  We ended up in a parsonage in Jeffersonville, Indiana,   Somehow the rest went ahead to the place where the service was being held and I got left at the parsonage.  The pastor offered me his car which he never should have done because there was snow on the ground and I was from a land where it never snowed.  But, I went and arrived late and remember feeling the whole time that I should not have been there.    

Obviously, the memory of that night has lingered.  I figured years ago that there was some reason I was to stay at the parsonage, but I was too headstrong and ego bent to be able to hear that message.  When I think of that time, it is for me a moment of wondering what I missed that God wanted me to do by being so stubborn as to go when I should have stayed.  Maybe those moments are more common than I realize, but there are times when God has something planned and we just go our way ignoring His leading and something does not get done that He wanted to do through us.  The night remembered long years ago has always had that kind of feeling when I remember it.