The one

““If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others on the hills and go out to search for the one that is lost?”Matthew‬ ‭18‬:‭12‬ ‭NLT‬‬

On Saturday in our trek we passed around six sheep tethered by the Snake Lake. The sheep were dirty. The keeper lived in a small Tim shack near the lake. There were several new lambs frolicking around the sheep. I had never see sheep tethered as I come from Australia where hundreds, perhaps thousands roam in a paddock eating grass. The sheep by the lake were trying to eat straw. As this year I plan to start a sheep farm I determined not to tie my sheep up with a tether. Mind you, Australian sheep have huge paddocks to roam across and the farmers have sheep dogs to keep the sheep from roaming into wrong pastures.

I am sure the shepherd does not want to lose his sheep in the lake or have them wandering off and being attacked by dogs or stolen by hungry locals.

Jesus was telling the crowds a godly truth; He was the good shepherd and He came to seek and save the lost. I once lost my daughter. She was around 10 and had gone to find her school bag at the train station. It was dark and she did not return. I called the police. I had a small Christian bookshop near the station and was open for night trading. My daughter and son had come from school to have dinner with me at the shop. My daughter was quite confidant around the station but a train had come in and hundreds of passengers had disembarked. 

As a mother I was frantic. Realising I should not have let my daughter go by herself to get her bag and feeling caught at the shop and not able to go with her. We prayed and she returned quite unharmed and bewildered at my concern. Losing my daughter would have been a great hardship for me. However, my gracious God returned her unharmed. 

As my daughter was more precious than a sheep, she was nonetheless my lamb. There was nothing I would have not done to find my daughter. Jesus went on to tell a parable about a woman who had lost a coin and then about a father who had lost his son. God is into retrieving lost people. They are more valuable than coins or sheep. He seeks and saves the lost, this is also our job. Amen!