Yes sir, yes sir, 30 bags full

Whoa. This is Chris. He is a merino ram and was lost in Australia for, well, long enough to grow 89 POUNDS of wool! Equivalent to 30 sweaters!? Talk about carrying a heavy load.

Maybe you have heard of this guy.  Apparently, he was separated from his herd at some point and spent the next 5-7 years livin’ it up, wandering around and munching on grass. He was just living large and doing his own thing. That lifestyle will certainly catch up with you at some point…

Spotted by a man that didn’t even know what he was at first, recruits were soon called in to shear Chris and now he is half his body weight and on to new pastures – hopefully with a good shepherd watching over him.

I have carried around this article about Chris since I first saw it in the newspaper in 2015. I related to it immediately when I read his story. Gosh do we carry a heavy load when we wander off from our Shepherd. It’s a gradual thing. Day by day, so subtle that you don’t even realize that soon you are trudging through molasses. Chris probably had no idea for the first couple of years that his new lifestyle was leading him down the road to death. Wow, that’s pretty deep, you say. Yup, I think so too.

Stay under the watchful eye of your Shepherd and the herd that knows Him. And remember, should you ever get lost, He will leave the other 99 to come and find you.

12What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one who wandered off? 13And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.         -Matthew 18:12,13

Stay in The Pasture.