Today's STORY and READINGS from John Taves
This week, I had the pleasure of picking up my first two sheep. When we lived in Mission, we had a flock always for almost thirty years. I looked forward to their calm grazing, the mowed pasture, grazed even and clean, and their trusting bleating as they gathered for a cup of grain at evening. But memories have a way of forgetting some of the other issues of animal ownership. Some of the more difficult ones.
On Monday evening, I arrived in Lund with my truck and two large dog crates. It was a twenty-minute wrestling match to separate my two sheep from the flock, wrangle them into the crates, and load them. An hour later, I arrived home and released them into their new pasture, overflowing with fresh grass and wild flowers. They ran to the far corner against the fence, and for the rest of the day just watched me and my dogs — too nervous to graze, and not trusting enough to come for grain. I sat in the evening, talking to them, and daily they have now become more calm.
How much like that Monday has been this year for us all. Like the sheep, we and they were part of a trusted family — a flock, even as we sometimes denote our church family. Because of Covid 19, we were torn instantly from all that was trusted and known and treasured. Our safe place.
Like them we have been thrown into new pastures, unknown spaces, away from the flock we have always known.
Like them, we are not sure anymore what is safe, who is be trusted or feared.
Like the sheep, we have spent the last months torn away from our trusted spaces.
The sheep are calmer now, as they adjust to their new, two-person family. They now slowly approach when I call them for supper grain. I, the new shepherd, must earn their trust.
May we as a church (flock) family be ever in prayerful search of our shepherd, our Jesus, and perhaps grow, in a quiet, meditative search for our shepherd’s care, love and guidance.
May we, like the sheep, begin to trust our new places, and not retreat in fear, but grow in our new reality that may leave us wounded, but but not unable to heal.
In our loneliness, let us not fear the unknown, but enter it open to learning and trusting.
May we re-gather, when we can, as a more mature, open, accepting, loving congregation, knowing how precious is the time we share.
Matthew 18:12-14 (CV)
”What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way, your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.”
Luke 15:3-7
Then Jesus told them this parable: "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn't he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbours together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.' I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”