I Have Never Once Not Gone After Him

There is a thing that happens on this farm about twice a month and it has never once gone differently.

Bucky gets out. Somebody notices, usually the boy, usually at the worst possible hour. And then I put down whatever is in my hands, and I get my coat, and I go.

I want to be honest about the part nobody puts in a story. I do not go cheerfully. I have opinions about that gate and about the animal and about the timing, and I express several of them on the way out. Toby has heard all of it. He walks beside me while I say it and he does not appear to take any of it seriously, and I have come to understand that he is right not to.

Because here is what he has actually watched, twice a month, for his whole life. He has watched a man complain the entire distance and go the entire distance. Not once has the complaining turned into staying home.

I never sat that boy down and explained anything about it. I would not know how. He simply has never in his life seen the other thing happen.

The number that makes no business sense

Jesus tells a story that would fail any reasonable audit.

What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? (Luke 15:4)

Read it as arithmetic and it is indefensible. Ninety nine secured animals left in open country to chase one that wandered off. Any sensible manager cuts the loss.

But read what the shepherd actually does. He leaves. He goes after. And the phrase that ought to stop you is until he find it. Not until dark. Not until it becomes unreasonable. Until.

And when it is found, there is no lecture:

And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. (Luke 15:5)

On his shoulders. The animal does not walk back and prove anything. It is carried, by the one it cost the search, and the one carrying it is glad.

You are not left at the edge of a field to find your own way back. You have somebody who goes out. Luke 15:4 says he goeth after that which is lost until he find it, and it is His Spirit rather than your sense of direction who closes that distance.

You are carried rather than lectured at the end of it. Luke 15:5 puts the animal on the shoulders and puts rejoicing in the same clause, and the Holy Spirit is what makes an old picture arrive as relief in somebody expecting a talking to.

He gathers the ones who cannot keep up

This is not a New Testament innovation. The picture is much older, and in Isaiah it is given with a particular tenderness about pace.

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. (Isaiah 40:11)

Read who gets named. The lambs, who cannot keep up because they are small. And the ones with young, who cannot keep up because they are carrying something.

Both of those are slow for reasons that are not their fault, and the verb attached to both of them is not drive and it is not hurry. It is gather, and carry, and gently lead.

You are being moved at the pace of somebody who noticed what you are carrying. Isaiah 40:11 names two kinds of slow and gives both of them a gentler verb, and the Spirit of God is what makes that read as care instead of as concession.

And it sits in a chapter that has just spent twenty verses on how enormous He is. The one who measures the waters in the hollow of His hand gathers lambs with His arm, in the same passage, without any sense that these are two different characters.

You have not been handed a God whose size makes Him rough. Isaiah 40:11 sits four verses from a description of oceans held in a palm, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets both of those be true in the same chest.