My Own Gospel Lens

What does this picture

have in common with his one?

 

What do either of them have in common with
this one?

Is there anything that all four have in common?

Now, there really shouldn't be much resemblance that you can see that would really make sense here. You could probably really stretch it and come up with something... but good luck. However, there is one thing in all four pictures that is so obvious that we overlook it entirely: The lens.

In the gospel, I have found that we all have lenses through which we see the world. Just like with these pictures, if we didn't have a lens, nothing that we see would maintain the same level of beauty. Things would be out of focus. The colors would melt together. The majesty of the image would be lost entirely. We would go from some incredible shots to some odd melted picture where we know something is there, but can't completely identify what. There is a picture of a lens in every photograph, and it decides everything.

Recently, I did a series of posts about some "Incomprehensible Joys" of my mission. Looking back and thinking on some of these experiences was incredible in and of itself. It got me thinking of more and more experiences. Most of these aren't very bloggable. They are conversations, quotes, and feelings I have had. Even the ones I shared I am positive are more dear to me than they are to any of you who read them. These all contribute to the lens through which I see the world and through which I see my religion and my God.

Even through all of this, there is one experience that I would say is the very essence of my lens. I am an odd sort, definitely not the common missionary. I like to seek questions so that I can eventually seek answers. It really is a bad habit that I sometimes take too far. It leaves me troubled for days or more sometimes, and yet in the end solidifies my testimony even more when I finally find the answer. Most of the principles I have the strongest testimony of are the very principles that were once the most in question for me.

I want to share an experience of my own conversion. My own incomprehensible joy, you might say. It has become the central anchor in my testimony, because it starts with my testimony being all but destroyed. Really, it is the lens that I see everything else through.

I went to college at Utah State University for a year before my mission. Loved it! Definitely where I was supposed to go. While the classes are admittedly not the most elite, the opportunity for student involvement was incredible. One of the activities I jumped right into was writing for the school's newspaper, The Utah Statesman. In my second semester, I was given a pretty minor assignment to cover an interfaith luncheon held at the LDS Institute. I went, interviewed the institute director and a few student of various faiths who were present, and finally I got to interview a religious leader from a non-LDS faith. His name was Jason, and he headed up a Born-Again Christian group there on campus called the Navigators.

I'm going to interrupt my story here and emphasize that I hold Jason in the highest regards. Even after this story, he and I have kept a very dear friendship and talk fairly regularly. I have no question that everything he did was truly looking out for me and my best interest. I want that to be very clear.

Anyways, our interview went well. It stayed more about the event than about his beliefs, since it was for a newspaper. But, only a month or so later, I was surprised to see Jason again! This time, he was speaking to my fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon. Our SigEp chapter was overwhelmingly LDS, so we wanted to have representative of other faith groups come and talk a little bit. Jason was first up. We had some great conversations about the differences in his beliefs and our own. Bit by bit, though, my fraternity brothers had to go. Eventually, some two or three hours later, it was just me and Jason talking with each other. He soon had to go home to his wife and kids.

I ran into Jason a third time a couple weeks after we talked at the SigEp event, when we were walking opposite directions across campus. We said hello, and he said he'd been thinking a lot about our conversation and wanted to talk some more over dinner sometime. I was all for it, so we decided after finals week, we would go get some Costa Vida.

We did just that. We ate and talked, mostly just about our lives. Eventually, the conversation transitioned into religion. We compared our beliefs and just had friendly give and take. "I believe this because of this"... "Well, I believe this because of this." It was great fun. But, after we sat in the restaurant for three hours (not exaggerating!), we decided it was time to go! But, we made it a weekly habit. Usually we'd meet at either Costa Vida or Café Rio, but on occasion we'd just meet up at the SigEp house. I had a blast with those conversations!

Now, to put this into perspective, I received my mission call in March. This was all taking place in May and June. I was within a few months or reporting to the MTC on July 5.

Well, one day, our conversations took an interesting turn. Jason started talking about grace. He showed a few scriptures in the New Testament that really seemed to emphasize that our salvation is all about grace through faith and faith alone. He pointed out that the LDS doctrine of obedience to commandments, the necessity of baptism, and the emphasis on the temple contradicted this teaching. I threw out a few feeble, "faith without works is dead" lines, but I was unconvinced, myself. Here were Bible verses that seemed in direct opposition to what I'd been taught. And yet, Latter-day Saints love and adhere to the Bible. How could this be?

I don't know if I can fully explain how I felt. Here I was, about a month from going on a mission, preaching a message that I didn't fully believe myself. It seemed that, with the LDS Church, I would be going to Hell, and then as a missionary I'd be dragging souls right down with me. The best way to describe my feelings would be that it felt like I had just finished a long race, only to get whacked in the stomach with a baseball bat at the finish line. It was a disgusting, queasy, complete uneasiness. Here I was, about to go for two years to Rochester, NY, and I was pretty convinced that my beliefs were false.

The thought and worry stuck with me for days. (That may not sound like long, but my mission was coming,

and it was crunch time.) Eventually, at work one day, I was reading a Conference Ensign, and found this advice from Elder Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve:

"When I am faced with a very difficult matter, this is how I try to understand what to do. I fast. I pray to find and understand scriptures that will be helpful. That process is cyclical. I start reading a passage of scripture; I ponder what the verse means and pray for inspiration. I then ponder and pray to know if I have captured all the Lord wants me to do. Often more impressions come with increased understanding of doctrine. I have found that pattern to be a good way to learn from the scriptures." (How to Obtain Revelation and Inspiration for Your Personal Life, April 2012.)

I didn't really have a chance to fast since I read this in the afternoon, but that night, I went home and prayed. I told my Father in Heaven that I needed help now. I needed to know the truth now. In the Church, we talk about praying with real intent a lot. As missionaries, when we teach investigators to pray about the Book of Mormon, we emphasize that they need to pray with the real intent of acting on their answer, of being baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ if the Book of Mormon is true. As Latter-day Saints, we are really good about praying with the real intent to stay with the Church and keep following the prophet and keep believing that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, but I don't know how often we pray with the real intent to do otherwise if that is what God tells us.

This time was different. If God had told me that the whole Church was a farce, I would have been done. If God had told me that a mission would be detrimental, I wouldn't have gone. Possibly for the first time in my life, I had REAL real intent.

After I prayed, I didn't really know where to go, and didn't have any overwhelming direction one way or the
other. So, I figured I would just read Romans 3-5, as Jason had suggested earlier. I did decide, though, that I would read chapters two and six, just to make sure I had a better sense of the context. With these chapters and even the message of chapters three, four, and five surrounding the verses Jason had used, I realized that I wasn't quite as damned as I had felt. With a few references to Doctrine and Covenants and other verses of the New Testament, I saw that I wasn't fully done for. But... all the while, there was nothing too convincing that I was reading one way or the other. Maybe I wasn't so glaringly wrong.... but I didn't feel too overwhelmingly right, either.

As I read through the chapters of Romans, I kept seeing cross-reference after cross-reference in the footnotes to Alma 42. I seemed like Alma 42 must have been just the companion chapter of the Book of Mormon to Paul's Epistle to the Romans! Looking back, it is interesting to note that, in those five chapters, there were only three footnotes to Alma 42. But to me, it seemed like there must have been at least a dozen. Anyways, I decided that once I finished Romans 6, I would just go and read the whole chapter of Alma 42.

This turned out to be possibly the most important decision of my life.

Alma 42 is a lesson Alma is teaching his son Corianton. Corianton doesn't understand how justice and mercy can coincide in the same God. Alma goes through and explains that justice must be paid, but mercy will claim the penitent because of the Atonement of Christ. In my mind, it was the perfect explanation of how works (justice) and grace (mercy) work hand-in-hand. I was pretty stoked while reading it. But then the chapter ended with a few verses that I can never forget. Keep in mind, I was about a month from going on my own mission, and that was really what troubled me the most.

"And now, my son, I desire that ye should let these things trouble you no more, and only let your sins trouble you, with that trouble which shall bring you down unto repentance. O my son, I desire that ye should deny the justice of God no more. ... And now, O my son, ye are called of God to preach the word unto this people. And now, my son, go thy way, declare the word with truth and soberness, that thou mayest bring souls unto repentance, that the great plan of mercy may have claim upon them. And may God grant unto you even according to my words. Amen."

Here I was, a boy about to go on a mission and struggling to understand the nature of God's justice in order to know if I should really go on a mission. What happens? I read a talk by an Apostle of the

The "Incomprehensible Joy" of a Mission - Part 3 - Learning Forgiveness

This is Part Three of a series. While not necessary to understand this post, if you are interested in the first post, click here.

In Doctrine and Covenants Section 4 - a classic for missionaries - it teaches that anyone who embarks in serving the Lord, if he does so "with his might," then he "layeth up in store that he perisheth not."

When looking at the footnotes for this phrase, I noticed once that it referred to the story of Joseph in Egypt. Think through this story with me: The inspired Joseph lead Egypt in saving food for seven years. It probably seemed a silly thing to do. Times were great! There was so much food! Why save it? But, sure enough, a famine came. This food storage saved Egypt.

When embarking in the service of God, we create something of a spiritual food storage. As a missionary I have see miracles. Without question, I have seen more miracles in the past 18 months than in the 19 years prior. These become my "store." Eventually, the spiritual famine will  come. It always does. It will be then that I can draw from the food storage I've been accumulating during this bounteous spiritual harvest of a mission. The short teaching of King Benjamin stands out to me: "Remember, and perish not" (Mosiah 4:30).

I have been pondering a lot over Alma 28:8 lately. It reads (with my own emphasis clearly added):

"And this is the account of Ammon and his brethren, their journeyings in the land of Nephi, their sufferings in the land, their sorrows, and their afflictions, and their INCOMPREHENSIBLE JOY."

In the next series of posts, I would like to share some of my favorite stories from my mission. No question about, there's been a lot of tough spots. But I don't think it's by mistake that this verse describes "sufferings," "sorrows," and "afflictions" - three synonyms for "really crappy time" - and only one word for "really good time." There's a lot of really crappy times out here. However, I absolutely refuse to believe that it was by accident that the good times as much more powerful language than the bland words for crappy times. The joys of a mission truly are incomprehensible.

For the sake of those who I talk about, I normally change the names of everyone but myself. With her permission, however, I will be using Amanda's real name.

Learning Forgiveness

One day in my first area, we had a man come to church out of nowhere. Neither me nor my companion recognized him. He was clearly not a member of the church from a different area; we could tell that much. But we had no clue who he was. We talked with him a bit, learned his name was Shawn, got his information, and scheduled an appointment with him. A few failed appointments later, we finally got in with him!

Our first visit went all right. He seemed to want to get close with God, but he was clearly not really paying attention to anything new we were trying to say. But, we didn't have a lot of work going on at the time, and he was still coming to church, so we kept going back.

The situation turned from bad to worse, though, when we met Shawn's girlfriend, Amanda, who was living there with him. She would come in here and there, and usually end up berated completely unnecessarily by Shawn within a few minutes. Whether she was giving us dinner, asking a question, or anything else, it was not good enough for Shawn. She didn't talk much, but I can hardly blame her given the situation that she was in at the time.


Bit by bit, we got to know Amanda better as time went on, especially as we made friends with Amanda's daughters who were living there as well. Eventually, we were over there every couple nights to play with the girls. Some of my favorite memories of my mission include running around with these two, playing a strange combination of keep away and fetch.

All the while, though, there was really no progress in teaching Shawn. My companion and I really weren't sure what to do. Even worse, Shawn's treatment of Amanda got worse and worse. My companion and I really didn't know what to do there.

One day, we drove up to Shawn and Amanda's house. She came out to the driveway, and told us that Shawn wasn't home. We initially took that as her inviting us to leave - but she just stood there at our window, looking at us. We carried on a little small-talk conversation, but we weren't really sure what to do. All of a sudden, she says, "You know, I would go to church too if I had a ride." We had always assumed she wasn't interested since Shawn would come and she wouldn't. But we quickly arranged for her to get a ride.

She came on and off for the next month or so, and we got to know her a little bit better as time went on. One day, we saw her at the library, clearly upset. We asked her what was wrong, and went outside to talk. Shawn had just been put in jail for as much as six months. In mine and my companion's mind, we thought it might be a kind of good thing, but we saw her dilemma. He was the only one working in the house. She had two kids at home to take care of, and no real way to pay for them or the house. And, as big of an idiot as he was, Amanda definitely did have feelings for Shawn.

We started making a special effort over there. The girls were really troubled. The older one was convinced

that Amanda was going to be gone as well, any day now, and would have a small tantrum whenever Amanda left the house. The younger one didn't fully understand what was going on, but was quite willing to share that her dad was in jail. We tried to help Amanda as much as we could around the house, while throwing in random spiritual tidbits whenever we could.

I was on an exchange with Elder Jeffries one day and we stopped by Amanda's. I didn't really explain the situation as well as I should have, but I intentionally left out that we had never really had a sit-down lesson with her. I figured we'd see what his naivety could do. Sure enough, after a little small talk, Elder Jeffries asked, "Could we sit down and teach you a lesson?" To my thrilled amazement, she eagerly accepted. Knowing that the classic first lesson about the Restoration wasn't really what she needed, we had a warped lesson about why bad things happen and how we can use Christ to help pull us through them. I don't remember many of the details, but I remember two things: First, she was crying through most of it. Second, Elder Jeffries invited her to be baptized and she accepted on the spot.

We were able to continue teaching Amanda, and it was one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had.  I want to interject here and assure you that I have Amanda's permission to explain all of this. But, as we got to know her more and more, one of the most insane life stories started unfolding before us. Growing up, Amanda had been abused very bad. Anything bad that a father could do to his girl, her father did to her. When she was sixteen, I believe, he was arrested and is now serving about 30 years in prison. From there, her mom decided it was more important to find a new man than take care of her kids, so Amanda filled the role of mother for her younger brother and sister. Also when she was sixteen, she had her first child. She has since had three more from three different fathers,

The "Incomprehensible Joy" of a Mission - Part 2 - Let's Go Street Contacting...

This is Part Two of a series. While not necessary to understand this post, if you are interested in the first post, click here.

In Doctrine and Covenants Section 4 - a classic for missionaries - it teaches that anyone who embarks in serving the Lord, if he does so "with his might," then he "layeth up in store that he perisheth not."

When looking at the footnotes for this phrase, I noticed once that it referred to the story of Joseph in Egypt. Think through this story with me: The inspired Joseph lead Egypt in saving food for seven years. It probably seemed a silly thing to do. Times were great! There was so much food! Why save it? But, sure enough, a famine came. This food storage saved Egypt.

When embarking in the service of God, we create something of a spiritual food storage. As a missionary I have see miracles. Without question, I have seen more miracles in the past 18 months than in the 19 years prior. These become my "store." Eventually, the spiritual famine will come. It always does. It will be then that I can draw from the food storage I've been accumulating during this bounteous spiritual harvest of a mission. The short teaching of King Benjamin stands out to me: "Remember, and perish not" (Mosiah 4:30).

I have been pondering a lot over Alma 28:8 lately. It reads (with my own emphasis clearly added):

"And this is the account of Ammon and his brethren, their journeyings in the land of Nephi, their sufferings in the land, their sorrows, and their afflictions, and their INCOMPREHENSIBLE JOY."

In the next series of posts, I would like to share some of my favorite stories from my mission. No question about, there's been a lot of tough spots. But I don't think it's by mistake that this verse describes "sufferings," "sorrows," and "afflictions" - three synonyms for "really crappy time" - and only one word for "really good time." There's a lot of really crappy times out here. However, I absolutely refuse to believe that it was by accident that the good times as much more powerful language than the bland words for crappy times. The joys of a mission truly are incomprehensible.

For the sake of those who I talk about, I will be changing the names of everyone but myself.

Let's Go Street Contacting

I said in my previous post that most of my best stories take place when all of our appointments fall through. I mean it. Most missionaries get down when all their appointments fall through. I'm not saying that I don't get flustered by it, but there's always this little idea in the back of my mind that says, "Ah man!! We're going to find this crazy-perfect prepared person right now!!" 98% of the time, we don't. But this story is about one of the 2% instances.

Our area essentially took up that big open area
that doesn't have any towns in it big enough
for a dot...

I was serving in the Freedom area. Last post I talked about how small Warsaw was. Well, Freedom is even more rural. When appointments fall through in Freedom, you're really in a bind, because it's not like there's a neighborhood to go tracting in or a member of the Church right around the block.

But, alas, one night they did fall through. My companion and I were at home eating dinner when we got call after call cancelling on us. I'll admit, I don't pray as much as I should. I'm a fairly prideful guy, and quite often have to remind myself to humble down a bit. This night, though, we did pray. My companion and I knelt down and asked what the Lord thought we should do with our time. Almost instantly, I told my companion, "We have to go street contacting!"

The look on my companion's face was completely justified. Essentially, it said, "You're an idiot. We live in Freedom." Street contacting (which is exactly what it sounds like: contacting people on the street), works in big cities where people are bustling around, not in farmland.

Still, we didn't have any other ideas, so off we went! We drove out to Delevan, which was a little more of a community. We started walking around, it was nighttime and probably around 35 degrees so we weren't exactly comfortable, and lo and behold.... we saw no one. We walked a good hour, and still saw no one. Finally, frustrated, I decided that we would just walk to the gas station so I could buy a Dr. Pepper then call it quits. (Lesson learned: ALWAYS get a Dr. Pepper. Haha that's not really the lesson here... But I do like Dr. Pepper a lot.)

So you can fully understand the street that we were on, here is a screen shot from Google Maps:

Tiny.

Well, we walked to the gas station, and still saw no one. We got my Dr. Pepper, and were the only ones in the gas station. Then we walked out into the parking lot... and someone was walking towards us! 

As we walked up to him, I just extended my hand and said, "Hi, I'm Elder Allen!" To my surprise (in all honesty, even when people are outside, street contacting isn't too effective) he shook my hand and said, "Jerry Miner." 

"Do you know who we are?"

"Yeah, you're Mormons!" (I realize that when reading this, it could sound rude. It wasn't. He was a gruffer guy, but definitely had an intrigued voice.)

Disclaimer: This isn't me. Or Jerry. And it wasn't bright and
happy and green outside. But it shows missionaries
randomly contacting someone, so it works.

"Have you ever talked with us before?"

"No, I can't say I have."

"Well... would you like to?"

"Sure, how about tomorrow at 11:00?"

Anyone who has ever served a mission know that that sort of thing doesn't happen. People rarely invite us over, especially when the conversation is as void of substance as ours.

We went over that day, not really sure if Jerry would even be there. Sure enough, he was! We started talking to him outside, and he explained that he'd actually trained to be a pastor at one point, but got frustrated when one of the first books they handed out was about how to do the church's accounting. "You know," he said, "I sometimes don't even know if Christ's church was around after people killed Him and the apostles!"

For those unfamiliar with the LDS doctrine of the Great Apostasy, click here. For those of you who are familiar with it, you understand why that will grab a missionary's attention.

He continued, "In the Bible, people always had prophets to keep things together. We need a prophet!"

Again, if you aren't familiar with why my jaw was dropped as far as my sternum, click here.

We started teaching Jerry a little about the Restoration and about Joseph Smith. He was liking what he was hearing, when he interrupted: "You know the problem with a lot of these churches is that they aren't teaching out of the Bible anymore. They all have their own books now." My heart sank a little, because I thought for sure this was the end of our conversation. Latter-day Saints use the Book of

The "Incomprehensible Joy" of a Mission - Part 1 - Meeting Tops Girl

In Doctrine and Covenants Section 4 - a classic for missionaries - it teaches that anyone who embarks in serving the Lord, if he does so "with his might," then he "layeth up in store that he perisheth not."

When looking at the footnotes for this phrase, I noticed once that it referred to the story of Joseph in Egypt. Think through this story with me: The inspired Joseph lead Egypt in saving food for seven years. It probably seemed a silly thing to do. Times were great! There was so much food! Why save it? But, sure enough, a famine came. This food storage saved Egypt.

When embarking in the service of God, we create something of a spiritual food storage. As a missionary I have see miracles. Without question, I have seen more miracles in the past 18 months than in the 19 years prior. These become my "store." Eventually, the spiritual famine will come. It always does. It will be then that I can draw from the food storage I've been accumulating during this bounteous spiritual harvest of a mission. The short teaching of King Benjamin stands out to me: "Remember, and perish not" (Mosiah 4:30).

I have been pondering a lot over Alma 28:8 lately. It reads (with my own emphasis clearly added):

"And this is the account of Ammon and his brethren, their journeyings in the land of Nephi, their sufferings in the land, their sorrows, and their afflictions, and their INCOMPREHENSIBLE JOY."

In the next series of posts, I would like to share some of my favorite stories from my mission. No question about, there's been a lot of tough spots. But I don't think it's by mistake that this verse describes "sufferings," "sorrows," and "afflictions" - three synonyms for "really crappy time" - and only one word for "really good time." There's a lot of really crappy times out here. However, I absolutely refuse to believe that it was by accident that the good times as much more powerful language than the bland words for crappy times. The joys of a mission truly are incomprehensible.

For the sake of those who I talk about, I will be changing the names of everyone but myself.


I have found that most of my greatest stories occur when our plans fall through. Why is that? I have no clue. It's frustrating sometimes, but it really always turns out for the best.

This story is one of those times.

I was serving in Warsaw, a small town of about 5,000-6,000 people where every person is glad to tell you that they have more cows than people. Elder Bradford and I had a night nicely planned out. In fact, it was set to be an over-crowded night. When the first appointment fell through, it wasn't a big deal. When the second and third fell through, it became a bigger issue. By the late afternoon, our evening was empty.

After thinking of things we could do for a while, we decided our best bet was to go to the church and just use their computers for some internet proselyting. By the time we walked there, though, we found out that no one was there and the computers were locked in a room we didn't have access to. We sat in the chapel, trying to come up with something we could do to keep ourselves busy.

Eventually, we came up with an idea: We would just go through our phone and call any contacts we didn't recognize. Really, it seemed pretty silly. The phone had been in Warsaw for years; who knows who could be in our contacts. But, we went ahead with it. Most of the numbers were disconnected; the rest went to answering machines. After a couple dozen calls, though (we started a Z and worked our way up!), we came to the contact "Tops Girl." (Haha, that name isn't changed. It's REALLY what she was saved as!)

Tops is a grocery store that's really popular out here in New York. A contact that has a name like

"Tops Girl" is not the most promising. I was about to skip over it, when I decided it was as promising as anyone else; who knows, it might even still be a connected number.

Not only was it still in service, but someone answered! I introduced myself and said I was a missionary for the LDS Church. I asked if she remembered meeting with the missionaries. Apparently three years ago, she worked at Tops and the missionaries had got her number... and never got ahold of her. I asked if she would be interested in meeting up sometimes, and to my amazement, she said yes! Not just halfheartedly, she said, "Yeah... I'd like that actually!"

We talked a little more about the basics of LDS theology and her own religious background. What she said next, I will never forget:

"You know, it's weird that you called today. I was raised Christian, but I kind of fell away as a teenager, and my life's been going downhill. I feel like I'm pretty much at rock bottom now. But, this morning, I said a prayer for the first time in years and just asked God for a way out. A couple hours later, you guys called."

I assured her that this was no coincidence. Elder Bradford and I proceeded to meet regularly with

"Let us now go... and see this thing" - Following the Example of the Shepherds

In my last post, I talked a lot about the Wise Men. I quite liked thinking through the idea that I wrote about, so if you haven't read it, you should. Just click here!

But, if we are going to talk about one stereotypical aspect of the Nativity scene and pull out some deeper meaning, we have to do the other, as well. I want to talk about the Shepherds.

Anyone who has seen A Charlie Brown Christmas has heard Linus perfectly recite the classic announcement of the angels to the "shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night" (Luke 2:8):

"Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger" (Luke 2:10-12).

Immediately following, concourses of angels appeared, praising God, thrilled at the peace that was soon coming to the Earth.

Put yourself in the shepherds' shoes (sandals?). It was springtime, the sheep were in birthing season. It was the middle of night, the shepherds were busy and tired. They had things to do, lambs to birth, excuses that could easily be made. But, rather than making excuses, they said, "Let us now go... and see this thing" (Luke 2:15). They "made haste" (Luke 2:16) and came to the find the Son of God laying in a manger, just as the angels had said.

Here is where I want us to think. The Messiah had been awaited throughout the history of Judaism. However, the scribes at this time were expecting something flashy, something grand. They didn't just want a Redeemer, they wanted a Deliverer. They wanted a King who would eradicate foreign powers from Jerusalem.

They did not want a baby boy born to poor parents in a manure-ridden stable.

However, when the Shepherds saw Jesus and His mother, something clicked for them. The very next verse says they ran all over Jerusalem telling everyone about this new Boy. It's interesting, for we see the exact same thing at the beginning of John, when Phillip invites Nathanael to "come and see" the Christ (John 1:46). Within verses, Nathanael is testifying that Jesus is surely the Son of God.

As missionaries, we don't go around toting titles as the smartest most educated scholars. We can only invite people to "come and see," asking them to "now go... and see this thing." Just as the Shepherds and