This may be a bit redundant for regular readers, but Shepherd of the Valley is going to do a follow up on Miracle for their Good News for Kids this Sunday...so I'm sharing an update here. Their text for the morning is The Good Shepherd. Here's my thoughts on our shepherd here at the Grovestead who loves his sheep.
Also, I wrote this out on Monday night. Since then a whole lot has happened and I will be back this afternoon with a big follow up. It has been quite the week with Miracle.
We just began our
fifth week of bottle feeding Miracle. The first week he lived in the house. The second week he moved back out with the sheep where we continued to bottle feed him every 3 hours. Thankfully that week there was a bright full moon to guide my walk out to the barn for his 2 am feeding. The third week we wisely dropped the 2am feeding. Something had to give. The fourth week we made our way out to the barn in a 48-hour blizzard, every three hours. And now we're moving into the fifth week, greatly reducing the bottle feedings as he transitions to hay.
We really love this little lamb and Rory is a really great shepherd. He knows his sheep and his sheep know him. When he walks into the barn with the bottles for Miracle, Miracle jumps up and runs right to the place where Rory feeds him. Miracle loves his shepherd, and his shepherd is trying to do what is best for Miracle: to help him integrate into his herd. This will be best for everyone once they are led out to pasture. We want Miracle to know that he is a sheep, afterall, and not a human. But he still has this memory of life with the family, trotting around our living room, having four kids love and adore him all day long.
We keep an eye on him all day long through the Lamb Cam. He is always being watched over, even when he feels very alone. He often looks very sad and lonesome.
But he has a twin sister who we named Big Sister because she is so much bigger. And she adores Miracle. She bounds around on all four legs, jumping around with joy, nuzzling Miracle and snuggling with him when it's time to sleep. She lays her head on his body. It is darling. She is a gift to him.
Just this week Rory noticed a change in the Mama Ewe's behavior. She was boxing Miracle out when the hay was given and pushing him around with her nose at other times. She was rejecting him. It is interesting that she did not do this from the start, but now she isn't being kind. So Rory, wanting to protect Miracle and keep him safe, built him his own special pen with his own personal heat lamp. And that's where he is now.
It all makes me wonder about our own lives with the Good Shepherd. Do we all know or feel, on some level, that there is a heavenly home out there where we are fully seen, cherished, cared for in every way and loved in a way we crave every day? Do we remember that there is a Lamb Cam watching over all of us every day, aware of every hardship and trial, joy and success. (Except that behind that Lamb Cam is the one who created us. A Creator Cam). He sees every moment and wants what is best for us, withholding no good thing.
Rory is a very good shepherd. He knows his sheep well. It is sort of a funny thing, but all of our sheep are totally different to us in temperament and looks. To an outsider they would likely all look very similar, but to us they are each completely unique. I recently read The Shepherd's Life, a memoir of a shepherd in England who shepherds hundreds of sheep and knows them all, one from the other. Even after months of grazing and being up in the mountains. He knows them all!
Beginning the day of the blizzard, Miracle began acting very differently. By Tuesday morning he was hardly able to stand on his legs...
