| The farmer’s wife told me her husband was out in the barn sorting
sheep, so I went out to see how he did it. The sheep man was walking among the sheep
looking at them very carefully, Suddenly, he would catch one and throw it on its haunches.
Then he began to clip the wool from the sheep’s eyes. "Why do you have to do that?" I asked. He replied, "Some sheep have a tendency toward wool growing over their eyes. This is a bad thing because a sheep with wool over his eyes doesn’t do good. He can’t see where he’s going; he doesn’t find his food easily; he strays off from the rest and is more apt to be caught by a coyote." I thought, this thing is prevalent among the Lord’s sheep as a lot of Christians don’t seem to be doing good at all. There must be wool growing over their eyes. I believe this because so many don’t seem to know where they are going, nor realize what they are headed for. They don’t seem to find much food. They stray off from the rest of the flock for weeks at a time, and are an easy mark for the Devil. I noticed, however, that the farmer handled his shears very carefully around the sheep’s eyes lest he injure them causing the sheep total blindness. In trying to remove wool from the eyes of the Lord’s flock it might be good to remove the wool from our own, and then proceed tenderly, graciously, lest we put the eyes out altogether thereby making the cure worse than the cause Seeing I was interested, the sheep man came over by the door of the barn. He wiped the perspiration from his face. "Working with sheep takes lots of patience," he said. "Sometimes we have a hard job to get some of the little lambs started taking milk from the mother. They can’t find the milk so we have to help them. But a hired man usually doesn’t like to bend down to help them. He tries to kick them around to the mother’s side, but that is no way to do. I always get down on my knees with the lamb, then it is easy to help him and he soon learns. But you just have to get down on your knees; there is no short cut, you have to get on your knees if you are going to help the lambs." This was my lesson on how to care for young Christians. The Scripture says the hireling careth not for the sheep. You can tell him because he doesn’t like to get down on his knees. He tries to kick the lambs into line, but seldom does he get any into a position to feed on the Word of God that way. A true shepherd knows what it is to get on his knees with the lambs. It is hard to kick a lamb when you are on your knees for him in the presence of God. It is a position we need to know more of ourselves. Perhaps if the shepherds would get more into the "knee" position, the lambs would find it easier to get into "feeding" position in the Word of God. But it takes patience. Then the farmer smiled at me and said, "This might sound queer, but it is true if we keep sheep on a lean pasture, or dry feed, they will usually have only one lamb. But if we keep them on a lush pasture, like a green wheat field for a period before breeding season, they usually have twins and even triplets. It depends on the food they get." So my training continued. If we want to be fruitful for God it means we need to be more in the green pastures of His Word. Too many of us are on dry feed and bearing but little fruit. The old farmer turned back to his work little realizing, perhaps, the significance of his words nor the conviction his "sermon" had wrought in his visitor’s heart – lest wool grow over the eyes, lest, like a hireling he kicks instead of kneels on behalf of the lambs, and lest he be found unfruitfully feeding on dry feed and not in the lush pastures of His own precious Word. L. E. Lindsted |