I guess God thought we needed an object lesson for yesterday's Gospel reading. Our lay speaker chose the Parable of the Lost Sheep as the centerpiece for his sermon. Because I find adult Sunday School material based on the preacher's Bible readings, I had already rounded up some applicable study questions for
Luke 15: 1-7.
- Do we celebrate the lost being found?
- Do we celebrate ones who search for the 1 instead of the 99?
- How strange is it to risk losing 99 to go after a single one?
- Is that what God does? Should we do that?
- Who are the lost sheep in your life?
- Caring for the lost comes in many shapes/sizes. Can you think of any?
- What other things can we do for the lost sheep in our world?
(Questions from Faith
Element: Setting the Bible Free)
Before we got to church Sunday morning to contemplate these and other questions, we were reenacting our own version of the Lost Sheep parable. Our neighbor knocked on the door Sunday morning to let us know we had cattle out. So much for a lazy Sunday morning drinking coffee and watching CBS Sunday Morning before getting ready for church.
We got the 4-wheeler, and the round-up began. Thankfully, only a few mamas and babies had taken off for "greener pastures."
Randy "encouraged" them to head toward home on the 4-wheeler, and I stood near the gate to turn them into the pasture. Mission accomplished ...
... or so I thought! But my husband has sharper eyes than I do. He saw a "lost" calf still hanging out in the alfalfa field. While he worked on repairing fence, I volunteered to take a 4-wheeler ride to round up the straggler. The parable may have had a lost sheep, but I had a lost calf to wrangle!
I am much more tentative using my camera while trying to drive a 4-wheeler these days after an
unfortunate camera casualty during another cattle round-up earlier this spring. The calf really wanted to squeeze through the fence.
Eventually, I got it guided along the fence and back into the pasture, where it went to join its buddies and find its mama for a milk break after all that running.
Randy got the fence fixed.
I got to watch one segment of the CBS Sunday Morning show. Only the Sunday School clerk beat us to church. And we had a real-life example of the lost sheep ... or, in our case, a lost calf.
Today and Tuesday, we have more cattle round-ups and deliveries to summer pasture. Let's hope we don't have more reenactments of Jesus' Lost Sheep parable. I think I got the message already!
Kim,
ReplyDeleteSo goes a Sunday Morning on the farm. Glad the round up went smooth and you made it to Church on time.
Good Luck with getting cattle to grass this week!
We are on the down hill slide calving. Only 6 babies today.
The weatherman is talking snow for us. They are also saying temps in the 40's maybe 50 for the next 2 weeks. 20* below normal for this time of year.
In Kansas, they say if you don't like the weather, just wait! I suppose that's true in your neck of the woods, too. We are supposed to have a cold front come through late tonight or tomorrow, too, but no snow for us, thankfully! We did have frost on the windshield Sunday AM as we left on our cattle round-up.
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