God loves His Stupid Sheep

So tonight Pastor Geoff spoke on God being our Father, Shelter and Shepherd. The thing that stood out to me is God as my Shepherd. I learned that sheep refuse to drink from running water. He leads me beside still waters. He makes me lie down in green pastures. I love that God will make us be where we need to be. A shepherd sometimes needs to use his ROD to push the sheep down, even if the sheep fights, the Shepherd knows what's best for his sheep. A Shepherd spends 100% of his time staring at sheep. His job is to keep the sheep safe, even when the sheep think they know what's going on.

In high school, one summer at camp, we made up a song--and one of the verses was, "God loves his stupid sheep, even when we get no sleep."

Sheep are so stupid, but think they know everything!

The summer of 2005 was spent in Austria living at a Castle doing housekeeping. I almost despised every second of my time there. I met a few special people and I feel like that's why God had me go....but after tonight I can think of another reason. Sheep.

The weather at the Castle is nuts during the summer with the biggest thunder and lightening storms I had ever experienced. Lightening that flashed the entire sky and thunder that made the whole castle shake!

Well imagine a whole bunch of dumb sheep having to be outside during a thunder and lightening storm. This thunder shook the ground, and not just for a few seconds, but almost a minute at a time shaking! Those sheep cried like mad. I have never heard a group of animals complain about how miserable they were like those dumb sheep. They also stunk. After a hard rainfall, those sheep were soo stinky.

We were able to compare humans to sheep in so many ways that summer, and got a greater understanding of why God compares us to sheep. We deserve it. We think we know best. We try to fight our shepherd. We cry and get scared when we shouldn't be. We also are good at making ourselves stink. (not physically, but we can totally stink spiritually.)