I just wanna be a sheep, baa baa baa baa

I recently received an e-mail from a friend, Nick, with whom I hadn't been in touch for a few years. We first got to know each other when I was a minister in Sheffield and Nick worked as a lay worker in the area. I remember one occasion, at a meeting of preachers, when Nick was trying to get them to understand that it's not particularly helpful to children and young people when we ask them to sing very old hymns with antiquated language which even adults sometimes struggle to understand. To do so, he got the preachers (most of whom were middle-aged to elderly) to sing a children's song, "I just want to be a sheep" There are some great actions to go with the song, and a good number of the preachers were very embarrassed at having to sing this children's song. Nick certainly got his point across!

Jesus told a story about a lost sheep, and this week I have been out searching for sheep. Not real sheep, of course, but the cuddly toy kind of sheep. There are lots of cuddly toys about, but very few sheep! In the end I managed to buy two relatively inexpensive sheep on a market stall. You may be wondering why I have been sheep hunting? No, I haven't developed a sheep fetish, nor a sheep obsession. I want them to use in Sunday morning's family service.

The image of sheep and shepherd is used quite often in the Bible. Human beings are, on occasions, referred to as sheep. The prophet Isaiah writes, "All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own." He is speaking about the human propensity to chose our own way rather than God's way (just look around our world today to see what happens when we chose our own way!) The good news is that God still loves us, even when we stray from his path. He sent his Son, Jesus, who spoke of himself as the Good Shepherd. Jesus came, as he said, "to seek and save the lost". Hymnwriter Robert Walmsley, in his hymn "Come, let us sing of a wonderful love", puts it like this:

Jesus is seeking the wanderers yet;
Why do they roam? Why do they roam?
Love only waits to forgive and forget;
Home, weary wanderers, home!
Wonderful love, wonderful love,
Dwells in the heart of the Father above.

And I say Amen! to that (baa baa baa baa)