A shepheards love.

The other day I saw a shepherds love in action.

I went out to the barn to get something and noticed a man in the next doors garden/land. I wondered what he was doing there as I had not seen him before, he seemed to be just wandering about.

I looked over the fence to see a flock of sheep, he was their shepherd. I don't know if he was meant to be there or the sheep were meant to be eating all they could but the back of next doors land is open and here shepherds and there flock just wander looking for grass etc. for their sheep to eat. He might have been invited as this is sometimes a way of clearing the land where vegetables have grown, or he might have just wandered.

As I watched the shepherd walked over to a tree and started to knock fruit off the tree and put them in his pocket for later. One that he knocked off he didn't catch and it fell to the ground. One of the sheep saw this and ran after the fruit but the shepherd got there first and he picked it up and put it in his pocket.

The sheep went up to him and pushed its nose against his stomach as if to say "that was mine". After about a minute he reached into his pocket and gave the fruit to the sheep.

When I saw that it struck me how much that shepherd loved his sheep. Then how much it paralleled the Bible stories of the shepherds. How they loved their sheep so much that they would leave ninety nine to rescue one and how Jesus is called the "good shepherd".

How much more does Jesus love us, we are called his flock, and how much more does he give us. All we need to do is ask like the sheep did with the shepherd next door.