Daily Devotional

I recently saw a video online of a sheep stuck in a ditch, head first, frantically wiggling its legs. In the video a man comes over and with great effort pulls the sheep out from the ditch and sets it on the ground. The sheep then bounds away in glee and in two giant leaps lands head first into the same ditch about ten feet away from where he was first stuck and is now in the exact same position. I thought to myself, wow, what a stupid sheep! But at the same time realized this is a great picture of us as people, with God coming to rescue us, and we “as sheep,” planting ourselves back in the same ditch again and again!

Have you ever stopped to think about what a miracle it is that God hasn’t given up on us yet? I mean, if I was the farmer of helping that sheep, I think after the second time I’d be saying “ok I guess you want to be in that ditch… see ya!” We are that sheep! Returning to not only our sin, but often the same sin over and over and over again. But God is patient and loving and rescues us again and again and again. In the Bible we are compared to sheep quite a lot and it really is a perfect illustration of us as people. We are rather pathetic if you think about it. But it only serves to demonstrate God’s love and patience with us all the more.

I think it is important to remember as we often look at others and think wow, how could they be that dumb, sinful, ignorant, unloving, etc, that we all, including ourselves are really just pathetic sheep. We are all in need of a Savior. None of us is really any better than anyone else. You may not struggle with “fill in the blank” but you’ve got something, and need to remember that God loves you despite your sheep-like ways. He loves you so much that He sent His perfect, not at all sheep-like Son to die for you and all the other sheep! What an amazing love!

So what should our response to this be? Well, maybe try to stay out of the ditch for a change.

New King James Version (NKJV) Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.