We can learn a lot from sheep. Most importantly, sheep need to have a shepherd to guide
them to food and drink. The image
of God as a shepherd is frequent in both the Old and New Testament and we hear
the beautiful description of God as the shepherd who “feeds his flock; in
his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom, and
leading the ewes with care.”
I
recently had the chance to visit Africa and observed that in all the villages I
visited animals wandered around at will.
Chickens, goats, cows and donkeys freely grazed. As an American concerned about possessions
I asked my friend how they could tell who owned what. Do you just grab any chicken off the street for dinner? He answered that the animals know who
their owner is and they even come home each evening.
I
couldn’t wait for this parable to come up in the readings to preach on it again. I was prepared to wait months to share what
I learned about sheep from Africa.
Providentially, it came up only a few days after my trip. The point is that the lost sheep in
Jesus’ parable isn’t the cute little lamb that mistakenly wandered off from the
flock. This sheep was stupid,
rebellious and stubborn because it knew
its shepherd and left anyway. And
that is precisely the sheep Jesus goes after.
Jesus
comes after not the cute little innocent sinner, but the idiotic, rebellious
and stubborn one. All of us have
done things where we think, “Man, that was dumb.” No matter what we’ve done, Jesus the good Shepherd continues
to look for us. And when we return
to His arms the angels rejoice greater than the 99 righteous ones. This is how much God loves us.
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