He Would Not Leave the New Calf Alone

The calf came in the second week of January, which is a stupid time for a calf and was not the cow's fault or ours.

She was small. Not sick, just small, the way some of them are, and she went into the end stall with a lamp and extra straw and everybody in this house looked at her about four times a day for a week without saying out loud what we were all doing.

And Bucky would not leave her alone.

He got into that stall over and over. Not to bother her. He would go in and lie down along her back and stay there, and he did it about eleven times in five days, and every single time one of us moved him out, because a goat in a stall with a new calf is a thing that ends badly in every farmer's head. My dad moved him. I moved him. Mr. Ames moved him once when he came about the trailer.

He never fought about it. He never does. He would get moved and go and stand somewhere for a while and then he would be back in there, lying along her back, chewing.

On the Thursday night it went to nine below, which it had not done here in eleven years, and the lamp in that stall went out at some point in the night because the lamp in that stall is old.

My dad went out at four because he could not sleep. He said afterward that he came round the corner expecting the worst thing and what he found was a small calf lying against the wall with a goat curled the whole length of her back, and both of them asleep.

He did not move him. He stood there for a bit and then he went back to bed.

She is out in the top field now and she is not small anymore. And nobody in this family has ever thanked Bucky, because you cannot thank a goat, and also because he would not have any idea what you were doing.

The day of small things and who despised it

There is a rebuilding going on in Zechariah and it is going badly, or it looks like it is, because the new thing is much smaller than the old thing and people who remember the old thing keep saying so.

For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth. (Zechariah 4:10)

The question is asked as a rebuke and it is asked of people who were, in fact, despising it. There had been actual weeping, recorded elsewhere, from the older men who had seen the first temple and could see what this one was going to be.

And the answer given is not that the small thing is secretly big. The answer is about who is watching it: the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth.

You are working under a gaze that does not scale things the way a room does. Zechariah 4:10 answers a question about size with a sentence about attention, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that land as being seen rather than as being supervised.

There is a particular thing that happens to a child who is kind in a way that is inconvenient. They get moved. Not harshly, and usually by people who love them, and always for a sensible reason.

You have not been marked down for doing the thing nobody had a category for. The written word puts the plummet in a hand and the eyes on the work in the same verse, and His Spirit is what makes that arrive in somebody who has been gently moved out of the way all week.

The interruptions that turned out to be the point

There is a pattern in the gospels that is easy to miss because of how the stories are arranged.

Jesus is going to Jairus's house, which is urgent, and a woman in the crowd touches His coat, and He stops. He stops in the middle of an emergency for something nobody else in that crowd registered as an event.

And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me. (Luke 8:46)

The disciples say what any of us would say, which is that the crowd is pressing Him and this is not a useful question. They are right about the crowd and wrong about the question.

It happens again with the children. The disciples move them away, for a good reason, because there is important work happening and children are a nuisance in a doorway.

But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. (Luke 18:16)

Twice, the people around Him move the small thing out of the way, and twice He goes and gets it back.

You are not an interruption to something more important that God is doing. Luke 18:16 has Him call back the ones who had already been removed, and the Spirit of God is what makes that read as a permanent policy rather than as a nice moment.

You have been called toward Him by name, and nobody else's sense of the schedule overrides that. That is what the text does rather than what the disciples felt, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves it from their afternoon into somebody else's week.