The fact that shepherds heard the most important announcement ever, says nothing about them and everything about God. The culture in which Jesus was born did not give any honor or respect to shepherds. So why did the announcement come to them at all? Why not to priests and kings? Who were they that they should be eyewitnesses of God’s glory and receive history’s greatest birth announcement? In Christ’s day, shepherds stood on the bottom rung of the Palestinian social ladder. They shared the same unenviable status as tax collectors and dung sweepers. By the way, only Luke mentions them.