The Lord is my shepherd, and he loves me. You might think that sheep are silly white, woolly creatures with no more brain than a pea, who spend all their lives doing incredibly stupid things, but let me tell you. We are not. And even if we were, our shepherd loves us.
For a start I am not white. Here in this land, we sheep look rather like goats, we are long legged, with long faces, brown bodied (not mud covered) with little tails. We can only really be told apart from a goat because of our ears, which aren’t floppy like theirs are. Remember in the bible where it says that the Lord will separate out the sheep from the goats. That is a more difficult task than it might seem when we look so alike. But my shepherd loves me, no matter what I look like.
I remember when I was a lamb I got lost. I went off without my mother. I slipped over the edge of a cliff and fell onto a ledge about half way down. I bleated and bleated all the day, but no one heard me. By nightfall I had just about lost my voice, when I heard my shepherd call me. I tried to bleat but no sound came out, things were looking very bleak for me. If I had remained out there all night, I might well have been seen by one of those eagles, and been carried off to make baby eagle tea. Then I remembered the face of my shepherd, his kind, gentle face, and I let out a little bleat of despair. It was just enough. He heard me. I can’t tell you how glad I was when I saw his face peering over the edge of the cliff. When he scrambled down and picked me up in his strong arms, I could have wept, except that sheep don’t cry. He put me on his shoulders, and carried me back up the cliff and home again. I was glad to see my mum again; and wasn’t I hungry. My shepherd loves me no matter what I do.
My shepherd likes to find us the cleanest and freshest water that he can, and the greenest grass. Every morning he sets off from the sheepfold where we spend the night, and calls us to follow him. We know his voice, and we know that he will look after us, so we follow him. I remember once the door to the sheepfold was opened at a very strange time in the morning, and a voice called to us to come out. We all looked at each other, because it wasn’t our shepherd’s voice, then we settled back down to sleep again. The man came in, and tried to get those nearest the door to follow him, but even when he tried picking one up, we wouldn’t move. He wasn’t the right man, and we didn’t trust him, so we didn’t move. Not so stupid, eh?
As I was saying, every morning our shepherd leads us out, and he calls to us, or sings to us as we move towards the meadows and the fresh green grass. As we eat and drink our fill he sits in the shade under a tree and plays his flute or whittles pieces of wood. If the grass begins to get low, we move on to somewhere new. My shepherd loves me and he feeds me with the best and gives me the best to drink.
Mostly during the day he sits and watches us, and life is very boring, but sometimes wild animals come and try to carry off the weaker members of our flock, then our shepherd has to get out his slingshot and staff, and fight off the lion or whatever. He has never lost yet in a fight, and he has never lost one of us. My shepherd watches over me and keeps me safe.
At night time he leads us back to the sheepfold, which he built with his own hands. It has a wall around it, and thorn branches laid on the top, and just one door. When he has checked us all in by name and made sure that we are all safe, he lies down in the doorway, and sleeps there with his staff and slingshot beside him. My shepherd guards me with his own life.
I may be just a silly sheep, I don’t know, but I know a good thing when I see it. I am well fed and watered; I am kept safe at all times; I am known by name and my shepherd unconditionally loves me. It seems to me that I have all that I could want in life, so maybe I am not so silly after all.
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