The Wanderer

Sitting in my prayer window this morning, I suddenly realised there was a cow on her own in the harvested barley field. As yet unperturbed by separation from her calf and the other mums across the road, she grazed happily along the verge of the field. A few of her friends bellowed, but she ignored them.

As I got up to call the farmer, he arrived, on his own. I saw him park the tractor in a strategic place, but still. Somehow he had to entice or usher the stray out of the wrong field and through the open gate of the right field, without losing the rest of the herd. I quickly put on shoes and jacket so I could give him a hand, but by the time I was ready, the cow was back where she belonged.

Over the years, we have participated in many a round-up, doing our best to help farmers with their errant herds. We have discovered our own ineptness. It takes skill and experience to move a herd, or even a single cow.

Jesus told stories of lost sheep rather than roaming cows, but the symbolism is the same. It is comforting to know that he is that skilled, experienced, loving ‘farmer’ who can seek out the one who has wandered off, without losing any of the rest of the herd.

I am the good shepherd, he declared. Today I’m praying for those I know who have strayed. He doesn’t need my help to restore them, but he graciously responds to our prayers.

The grass is always greener ...

We usually say this cynically, but sometimes the grass is greener on the other side.

There have been a couple of dozen cows and their calves in the field round which Dusty and I usually walk. Yesterday one cow got out, and when I saw her she was contentedly munching through the grass on the path down which we walk. 

I just had a chat with the farmer, and he said that he came across her, clapped his hands loudly and she leapt over the fence, just like the cow jumping over the moon, straight back into the field. Then he found her out again a little later, and realized it was time to shift the herd to a field with better grass in it.

Or better fences round it.

Then he recounted how one cow and her calf had got themselves mixed into the herd belonging to another farmer, in a nearby field, and it will take at least two of them to extricate them later on today.

Tricky business being a farmer.

Sometimes we are attracted away from our places of safety and nurture into an area that promises more. At first it may deliver, but like that cow would have found eventually, she’d have eaten her way round the path and come back to the barren road, or out into the woods with nothing on the ground but pine needles and dead pine cones. We, too, may find ourselves on a new path that seems great at first, but eventually leads us to a wasteland where there is no nurture, no food.

Jesus declares himself the good shepherd (to mix up the animals a bit!), and says that his sheep know his voice and stick close to him. He doesn’t leave us out in a field to fend for ourselves but is constantly watching out for our welfare. When the food is insufficient he leads us to pastures new, and doesn’t wait for us to leap the fence and head off in the wrong direction.

Nevertheless, we are all tempted to leap that fence, to strike out independently, either through rebellion or ignorance. 

When we do get lost, though, either along the wrong path or even in the wrong company, Jesus doesn’t leave us lost but comes looking for us. I suggested to the farmer that he just sell the cow and her calf to the other farmer, rather than spend a lot of time trying to separate her out of the wrong herd. He laughed, but we both knew he wouldn’t do that. He cares for that cow and her calf, and knows which herd she belongs with.

Jesus would never leave us mixed in with the wrong bunch. He promises that he will never leave us, never forsake us. We may turn our backs on him; we may leap the fence and head off with a new crowd, but he won’t leave us alone. He won’t force us to rejoin him, though, like the farmer. He respects our freedom of choice and honours that.

But when we’re ready to come back, he’ll lead us home.

Someone dear to me went down the wrong paths and into the wrong fields for several years. Then one day, he recognised that and he cried out to Jesus, saying that he wanted Jesus back in his life.

And in his heart he felt that Jesus reassured him. ‘I’ve always been here.’ He’d never left this dear person. He’d just been waiting for an invitation.