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on the 1st day of Christmas

For the next 12 Days Leading up to Christmas, I'm going to highlight things that have been on my ever crazy mind this holiday season.

On the first day of Christmas: sheep

Sheep are stupid.  Sheep stink. Sheep are dirty.  As a child, when I heard comparisons of people to sheep in the Bible, I thought it was a wonderful description.  After all, what could be better than to be a white or black fluffy animal, all soft and cuddly?
Then one day in China while biking with my students in the countryside, we encountered a herd of sheep. There was no shepherd; they roam freely. They saw us on our bicycles, and then decided to follow us. My students told me to ride uphill, quickly. Did I mention I don't bike very well, especially on a bike with skinny wheels? So I took the lower path, and the sheep overtook me.  Literally.  I came to a stop, and all these dirty, stinky, ugly animals that are as tall as my thigh are bleating and bumping me and then decided not to follow me and surrounded me.  I was starting to get a little scared.  One of my students yelled out "ride fast!" so I did, fearful of running over a sheep the whole time.  But it worked.  It spooked them, and they all ran off.

I thought about sheep again this week as our choir did the cantata from Max Lucado's writings and Tom Fettke's music. 
There is one night that describes the night He came - ordinary....The sheep were ordinary. Some fat. Some scrawny. Some with barrel bellies. Some with twig legs. Common animals. No fleece made of gold. No history makers. No blue-ribbon winners. They were simply sheep - lumpy, sleeping silhouettes on a hillside...
An ordinary lamb. Ordinary animals that provided warmth, material, food - sustenance.  And when a "perfect" animal from this ordinary group was found, it became salvation and forgiveness for one year.  I had never thought about the fact that the sheep, who were present with the shepherds to hear the angelic proclamation, were hearing that the ultimate sacrificial lamb had arrived. I doubt they realized or even understood (although the donkey did understand and see the "invisible" angel long before its master did!), but this fact stood out to me.  It's these little details that I love about Scripture. You read them, don't truly think about them, but when you start thinking about all the implications of a passage it is really neat and astounding.

On the first day of Christmas, my True Love gave to me, a great big herd of bleating, dumb sheep.
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