Over the last two days I’ve spent many hours looking for a lost sheep, wandering all over the ranch, and I haven’t found it yet.  Last night I looked for an hour, to no avail.  He knows my voice, and he follows me when I call, because he knows I often have a feed bucket in my hand.  When something like this happens, it reminds me of the parable of the Good Shepherd and the Lost Sheep.

Fresh on my mind was a program I heard on the radio Sunday. A woman author, whose name I did not get, was being interviewed by some talk show host I never heard of.  She was talking about the special love that the Shepherd had for that little lost sheep, the one he has gone looking for, and finds.

She said, “Only the lost sheep can know the comfort that comes from the Shepherd, in that special way, that all the others never know.’  I’m not sure how she knows that, but it was a topic of interest, so I kept listening.  Besides, she had a lovely Scottish accent, and I’m a sucker for a’ that.

She went on to say, “So here’s this little troublemaker – he always wanders off – the Shepherd knows just which one he is, because this is probably not the first time.” (Host chuckles knowingly.)  “And the Shepherd leaves the 99 and goes and looks for the one which is lost, and what then?  Does He scold it?  Does he get angry?  No!  He lovingly picks it up and carries it around his neck, and he takes it home, and he throws a party!”

Whoa!  Is THAT what I’m doing wrong?  Seems to me, our lassie here has her parables mixed up.  It was the Prodigal Son who got the party, and his father didn’t go hunting for him – he waited until the laddie repented of his sins and come home in grief and repentance.

As for the Lost Sheep, around the neck is the way to carry a lamb, whether you’re angry at it or not.  But let me tell you what happens to the lamb who wanders away from the flock, in the Biblical style of working sheep. 

1. He may get eaten by a predator, a very real possibility then and now;
2. Nine times out of ten, and maybe more often, when he gets back to camp, the shepherd takes out a sharp knife and cuts his innocent little throat and it becomes camp meat for a day or three.
3. IF, however, this lovely little lamb has the conformation and the bloodlines that the shepherd really, really wants, then he sets its pretty little leg up on a rock, and with his staff he proceeds to break it with a sharp rap!  Now, it can’t walk, at least not very well.  So… it can’t very well wander off on its own.  Each time he moves camp, he carries the little rascal, and this forces the sheep to bond with the shepherd.  It’s a lot of work, but when the shepherd sees something in that lamb that he wants to preserve, he puts it through as much pain as it takes to get that “maverick streak” out of him.

So, the party the shepherd might throw may very well be one where lamb stew is served to himself and the other shepherds who cross his path the next couple of days.

People get fanciful notions about farming and ranching, and I can understand that, if you live in a city and your experience with animals comes mostly from the television.  But when you make things up, and then you base your theological arguments upon your fancies, you’re going to find yourself straying far from the herd, and quickly so.

What I heard this program teaching was that, if we stray away from God, He will come and lovingly bring us back into the fold, and that He doesn’t condemn us for it, and so neither should we condemn others. 

This is pure blarney!  Maybe she was Irish, now that I think of it.  In any event, when we commit sin, it is the duty of our Brethren and our Shepherds to (a) look for us, and then, depending on the situation, (b) to break our legs, if that’s what it takes to break us of the habit of straying from the flock. 

Now, it may be that my sheep has gotten himself hung up in some briars, perhaps in a thicket.  (This is where you wish you had goats – they will let you know!  Sheep will stand there until they collapse from exhaustion, if you don’t find them.)  He’s no young lamb, and when I find him, I do hope I don’t have to pick him up, but I will if I have to.  But I don’t think I’ll be throwing a party when I get back to the house.  If I do, we’ll be eating mutton.