My friend, a former shepherdess of over seven hundred sheep, purchased Keller’s book for me as a present. I’ve had cattle and horses, so I thought I knew about raising sheep before reading this book. But W. Phillip Keller, a shepherd and rancher of sheep and pastor of a community church, taught me plenty about the critical care, maintenance, and time required to become an excellent shepherd of sheep and people.
Like God, who marks His children with His blood and redeems them at the cross, Keller illustrates how sheep herders in Biblical times marked their flocks by notching the ears of an ewe, ram, or lamb, marking them as their own for life. Today, sheep ranchers paint colored numbers on the side of their ewes and lambs, and they use ear tags as a preventative against theft. Whatever the method, the motive was the same — the shepherd always marks his sheep.
Before reading Keller’s book, I assumed the shepherd left the herd to find a missing ewe that had wandered off, tried to escape, or thought the grass was greener on the other side of the fence. But sheep, like people, can experience discontent, backsliding, fear, and danger and require compassion and help to get up, balance, and return to the flock. If a shepherd does not provide fresh, still water, food, safety, shearing, and continual care, sheep can flip upside down with their legs in the air, unable to return to the shepherd. If the shepherd does not pursue the sheep, the animal will die, alone and helpless.
After reading A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23: Discovering God’s Love for You, I read and recited Psalm 23, renewed and challenged. More importantly, I understand the heavy burden shepherds of the church carry for their flocks and the delight they must feel in restoring one lost soul from danger.
