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Baa-aa-aa


Ezekiel 34:31

“You are My flock, the human flock of My pasture, and I am your God.” This is the declaration of the Lord God.

 

Thought for the day – Baa-aa-aa

Ministry takes you to some strange places. On Wednesday I went to a cemetery in the hills to do a risk assessment. The cemetery had closed and the decision had been made to allow it to return to the wild. We still need to check it every so often, which was why we were there. And in the middle of the cemetery lay a dead sheep (Insert comments about appropriate places to die etc…). As if that wasn’t enough, there was another sheep nearby, possibly it’s lamb, bleating constantly. It turns out that whenever sheep are separated from the flock, however small the flock is, they bleat. And this is how shepherds find the lost sheep. In our case, eventually the other sheep wandered off. It hadn’t come back when we left. And it was all a bit sad really.

 

We as people are very much like sheep. That’s why the Bible uses the analogy of sheep for us humans so much. In Ezekiel today God calls us his flock. Granted we’re his human flock, but like sheep we still need looking after. And as we think in the case of our cemetery sheep, we get lost and need finding; before all sorts of horrible things happen to us. We need feeding and we need shearing. We need shelter and more importantly we need guidance.

 

The good news is that we are the flock of Yahweh, Jesus is our shepherd and we will receive everything we need from him if we stay near him. Drift off as sheep do and who knows what will happen to us. But even if we do, Jesus will come and find us. And he’ll use our bleating, our cries for help and our prayers to find us.   


 

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