all we like sheep

I love spring. I love the flowers and the green grass. I'm one of those annoying people that loves the rain, too (even seven days of it in a row). Every spring God displays His wonderful, sustaining grace by the renewal of His creation from death to life. It's amazing to contemplate.

Perhaps my very favorite thing about springtime is seeing the new lambs at Longstreet Farm in Holmdel. I've been going there every year to see the lambs since I was a baby. This little guy to the left is one of this year's new flock. This is what I've learned about sheep over the years: they're pretty dumb. All I've ever seen them do is eat and lay down and sometimes poke their heads out of their little shed. Sometimes they're fluffy. Sometimes they're sheared, often badly uneven and a little stained at places from the nicks. If you hold out grass to them, they'll eat it without a moment's hesitation. They're not very curious, just sort of complacent.

Last year Robin and I saw a tiny little guy that had squeezed through the fence from his pen into an adjacent field. The grass truly was greener on the other side of the fence, and he was having the time of his life, just one tiny little lamb in a huge field of green grass that was almost taller than he. Once in a while he'd look up from his feast and glance around, but I guess what he saw never concerned him, because down his head would go again and the munching resumed.

Every year the sheep remind me that God calls us His sheep. And to really appreciate that, you just have to sheep-watch. Like that lamb in his big field, who left safety behind to indulge his pleasures, we all have gone astray. And Christ, the Good Shepherd, is seeking out the lost sheep, gathering them together, and defending them.

Have you thought about the fact that God had us in mind when He made sheep to be so defenseless and dumb? It didn't just occur to Him one day that hey, the sheep and the people are alike, and besides what a nice poetical metaphor, maybe He ought to use that. Nope. He created the sheep exactly the way it is so that when we see one, we think, "We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. And as the sheep without the shepherd is lost, so am I lost without the Shepherd and Guardian of my soul." The sheep are silent preachers, silent testaments to the fact that we must be saved entirely on account of Christ's work and none of ours.

Truly, all creation displays His wonders and testifies of His goodness!