I WILL never forget my first real
encounter with a lamb. From babyhood I had been taught the
jingle about my namesake's lamb with snowy fleece. I knew
lambs by greeting cards, children's picture books, and
sentimental stories. But I had never come face to face with
the actuality until, as a college graduate and high school
teacher, I was invited to vacation on a farm in southern
Minnesota.
At once I was excited over a flock of
sheep I could see feeding in a distant pasture, with young
lambs sporting near their mothers. I wondered that they did
not look as white as the greeting-card darlings, but I laid
it to distance.
At first it had not been convenient to go
out to the flock. But one day the farmer said they should
really get Mary and a lamb together. With considerable
difficulty he maneuvered one into a pen near the barn; and I
was invited to pet it and be photographed in the act. I
still have the snapshot about—not on display. They got it as
I made one grab for the beast that was less unsuccessful
than my other efforts. Then I was ready for a bath and clean
clothes. The brown, smelly lamb with wool matted with mud
and filth was anything but friendly and angelic and cuddly,
or like the pictures.
So I found out that sheep, as well as
sparrows, were well chosen by God as symbols for human
beings. Sheep are quite human-likable and unendurable,
winsome and intolerable, stupid, irresponsible, wayward,
easily led astray, dirty, and malodorous. Yet sheep are
capable of improvement. I have since seen orphan lambs
carefully raised that were as charming as the storybook
lambkins. And I have known of real affection between sheep
and shepherd.
But it dawned on me that day in Minnesota
that the love begins with the shepherd—the sheep isn't worth
loving; it only needs loving. Goats are a lot more
attractive than sheep. They are more intelligent for one
thing; they bunch before the attack of predators, instead of
running in every direction, to let the killer pick out any
one he chooses. Human beings will run right out into
temptation, instead of staying dose to God.
I have found that the very helplessness
and defenselessness of sheep appeal to the heart of a born
shepherd. The goats—they want none of him. But the sheep
repay affection. The discerning shepherd recognizes
humanlike traits in sheep personalities, and he finds
himself understanding God better. We did not win God's love
for any deserving. He loves us because we need His love. All
we like sheep have gone our own way, and the wolf has mauled
us. We have chosen sordidness and worldliness and worse, and
we need cleaning up. The Shepherd provides it.
Then He does the supreme thing: He calls
Himself by the name we are that we may begin to be what He
is.
