11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. 12 But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. 13 The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. 15 As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. 16 And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd. St. John 10:11-16 (NKJV)

Dear Mr. Rambling Ron,

I have a complaint that I want to share with you. I hope you can help me because so far everyone I have written to cannot understand my SHEEP language. I thought that maybe somewhere in your RAMBLINGS you might have learned enough of my language to help me.

There are hundreds of us here, and many of us are not happy with our Shepherd and would like help in getting him replaced. Don’t get me wrong; he can be a nice guy. He always makes sure that we travel to places where there is plenty to eat and drink so we are well taken care of. The problem is that he is far too strict. We like to ramble around so that we can see what else is there to do. Some of us start to wander off and he calls us back. I don’t know why he does that because all we want to do is have a little fun. Besides that, we can take care of ourselves. There are other things like that which we would like to try, but he always says NO.

Sometimes when the Shepherd lies down to sleep, his hired help is in charge and he lets us have all the fun we want. Maybe I should not say that he lets us. It is more that he does not pay any attention to what we do. We really have fun. When the shepherd wakes up and sees that his hired help has allowed us to go astray, he is mad at his help. Then he hurries to find us and bring us back into the fold. If he doesn’t have enough to do, he is always looking for other stray sheep to bring them into the fold also. Mr. Rambling Ron, can you help us get rid of this shepherd and make the hired help our shepherd? Life would be so much better.

Sincerely,

I. M. A. SHEEP

A few weeks after I received the above letter, another came from the same writer.

Dear Mr. Rambling Ron,

 

Recently I wrote to you asking your help in removing the strict shepherd that we have. I now write asking you to disregard that letter.

Yesterday, the Shepherd was asleep and the hired help was supposed to be watching us. We saw that he wasn’t paying any attention, so we rambled a little farther than we had even gone before. Al of a sudden a big wolf jumped out from behind a rock. Did we ever make noise as we tried to run away. There were so many of us that the wolf had to decide which one of us he wanted. We ran and BAAAAAAed as loud as we could. I glanced back and it looked like the wolf was coming after me. As the wolf drew closer, Oh, how I wished that I would have never disobeyed and wandered away from the Shepherd. Just as the wolf was about to pounce on me, the Shepherd came running and with his voice and his staff and at the risk of his own life, my shepherd chased the wolf away. I looked around to find the hired helper that we liked so much, but someone told me he had run away.

Mr. Rambling Ron, please help us keep our shepherd. We know that he is strict and that is because he loves us and wants to keep us safe. We know that he loves us because he was willing to lay down his life for me. He is not just a shepherd, he is my Good Shepherd,

Sheepishly,

I. M. A. SHEEP

WE PRAY: LORD, Help us to see and know that what we want to do and what you would have us do are not always the same thing and then help us to choose which way to follow. AMEN.

A SUGGESTION FOR LIVING THE DEVOTION

If you have ever felt that God is too strict, just try to imagine what our world would be like if God went to sleep and today's world leaders would take over. Frightening isn’t it?