My niece, Laura, was rolling up her pants leg to show off her latest bruise from school.
She is an Animal Science major.
She gets to learn about animal behavior and be very "hands-on". As in....she travels off the UGA campus to local farms and interacts with them. So far I have heard her talk about working with cows and sheep. She loves it. If you knew her you would see that this completely fits her outdoorsy personality. (I had to include a picture of this pretty girl. She is a delight to all who know her.)
Back to her bruise...as she rolled up her jeans we could see that her knee was dotted with a deep black bruise.
I am pretty sure she earned this one while trying to wrangle sheep for shearing.
As she described her experience with these animals, I knew it had been a complete aggravation.
"They are so stupid. I don't want to work with sheep again. The are dirty and nasty. Their fur gets mangled and completely covered in mud. They are just dumb, dumb creatures. So aggravating."
As Laura continued to fill in us on her fun and frustrating class, my mind drifted to a parallel in God's Word.
So often we (you and me) are described as sheep. And Jesus is described as our Shepherd.
Think of Laura's description of these animals.
Doesn't it sound like us?
We are easily led astray.
We can be ridiculously hard to direct.
We make dumb and stupid mistakes....sometimes repeatedly.
We get mangled in the mire and muck of our circumstances.
Yet....God longs to shepherd us.
He does want to work with us in spite of our ineptness.
As Thanksgiving approaches I am filled with gratitude for my Savior.
He still loves us....even though we are stupid sheep.
Isaiah 53:6 "All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God's paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all."
2 Corinthians 5:21 "God had Christ, who was sinless, take our sin so that we might receive God's approval through him."
Stupid sheep rescued by the sacrifice of a saving Shepherd.
Happy Thanksgiving!!
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