[VIII. THE GOOD SHEPHERD AND THE LOST SHEEP]
[LUKE 15.4]
IN this story we have a peep of what happens on earth, and another peep of what happens in Heaven.
Think of that, children! For Jesus says that when anyone is sorry and comes back to God to be forgiven, the angels in Heaven rejoice!
Jesus tells us of a shepherd in that Eastern land who had a hundred sheep—and everybody who heard Him tell this beautiful parable of the Good Shepherd, would instantly recognize it as true of what happened all around them—of the shepherd, who on counting his sheep at night, might find one of them missing.
He tells us how that loving shepherd would leave the ninety and nine of his flock in the wilderness, and go to seek the lost one.
Over the mountains wild and bare, the shepherd sought the wandering one. The thorns pierced his tired feet, and his loving hands, as he looked here and there until he found it, perhaps caught in a thicket of thorns, or fallen into a pit from which it could not extricate itself!
He would disentangle the thorns from the imprisoned sheep, he stooped low, regardless of his own life, to reach it from the miry pit.
And then, when the shepherd had reached it at last, and had grasped it in his loving hands, he laid it on his shoulders, rejoicing.