The Good Goatherd

to

Bro Noel writes from timor

I had given it the title:  "The Good Goatherd".  I have included Syria in it.

Here is the article:

The Good Goatherd

 

                        …….. with apologies to all!

 

(The parable of the Good Shepherd awakens in us feelings of joy and gratitude since the Lord has left the ninety-nine in the wilderness to go after the lost one – that’s me on his shoulder we know.

 

In actual fact it seems to be the ninety-nine of us who stray regularly and so I’ve tried to rewrite this parable.)

 

So he told them this parable:  “What man of you, having a hundred goats, if he has lost ninety nine of them, does not leave the remaining one in the wilderness, and go after the ninety nine which are lost, until he finds all of them and brings them back, carrying some on his shoulders and herding the rest back with great difficulty.  And when he comes home he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them “Rejoice with me for I have found my goats which were lost”.

 

Then the Good Goatherd went on to explain:

 

Do you see those goats over there?  I found them selfishly grazing away on a good patch of grass.  They were just not allowing any of the other hungrier looking goats to come near the grass.  Somehow these goats had begun to believe that the shape of their horns and the color of their hooves had put them in a special class.

 

That other group of my goats had gone to Syria of all places.  Well, the goats in Syria seemed to have had good places for grazing although they did seem to be a bit too controlled and would have liked more freedom.  But there were some of my goats helping one group of the Syrian goats to destroy the grazing ground of the other group and vice versa.  Some years ago, when I was looking out for the 99 goats that had left my flock then I found them in Kuwait or kicking around in some smaller grazing grounds like Liberia, San Salvador, Panama, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka to name a few.  What made my task of getting them safely out was the presence of some of my bigger goats nearby, who it now appears had encouraged and instigated these of my other goats in the first place.  At times some of the bigger goats seemed to be of help but most of the time they would just be coming in the way.

 

I had quite a time with those goats over there.  They actually come from the same stock.  When I found them, however, they had already grouped themselves against each other.  One group called itself the Goatee Rouge and another group (further divided into smaller groups) was the Goatee Goat’s Liberation Front while the largest group just called itself the Goatee Goat’s Republic of Goatland.

 

Once again, it was the presence of other goats that made my task more difficult.  Wittingly or unwittingly they seemed to have kept the Goatee Goats more intent on kicking up the luscious ground they were standing on.  Soon that ground would have been useless for everybody.

 

But ultimately I succeeded.  See how friendly and mild they appear now.  You should have seen them then:  some so full of hatred and violence, others steeped in selfishness and meanness and still others either too naïve or who couldn’t care less.  When I had gone searching for the lost ninety nine and had seen these around, I couldn’t believe that they were mine.  But mine they were.

 

Come my friends, rejoice with me.