Came across this while reading:
it’s about a little lamb in a shepherd’s flock with a habit of wandering off.
Every time the flock grazed, this lamb would drift towards the ridges, fascinated by whatever layed past the edge. The shepherd had to bring him back again and again.
Then, he deliberately broke its leg.
It sounds brutal and cruel right.
Aren’t shepherds supposed to love their flock?
let’s see what follows. The shepherd doesn’t leave it behind. He sets the bone, binds it, and lifts the lamb up onto his shoulders. For weeks, he carries it draped around his neck. He feeds it from his own hand, keeps it warm through the cold mountain nights, and carries its entire weight across the terrain.
The lamb spends every hour listening to the shepherd’s heartbeat, smelling his coat, hearing his voice right beside it’s ear.
By the time the bone heals and the lamb is placed back on the ground, it never runs off again. It stays right at the shepherd’s heels. Not out of fear—out of familiarity. It learned whose presence was actually keeping it alive.
The break we resent
We look at our own lives through the same lens maybe.
You have ambition. You want to run ahead, explore the ridge, chase whatever is pulling your curiosity. You think you know the terrain better than anyone.
And then something breaks you.
A failed pursuit, an unexpected halt, a door slammed shut, or a stretch of time where you are completely stripped of your momentum. You feel grounded. Immobilized. You think you’re being punished, or that life is being unnecessarily unfair to you.
But what if that break was the only thing that kept you from walking off a cliff you couldn’t even see?
We resent the pain because our eyes can only see the grass right in front of our feet. A man’s ego hates being helpless—it wants to prove it can run on its own four legs. But maybe the pause was intentional. Maybe you were broken just enough so you’d have to be carried for a while.
- How often do we mistake preservation for cruelty?
- Even if you believe you’re the smartest person alive, can you accept that God sees miles beyond the horizon He is currently showing you?
Sometimes you have to lose your legs to realize whose shoulders you were meant to rest on.
Are we able to trust with our eyes closed?