Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

 “I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.  The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep.  So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away.  Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it.  The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me — just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.  I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen.  I must bring them also.  They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.  The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.  I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.  This command I received from my Father.”

• John 18:11-18

“Beware of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

• Aesop

I never thought that I would have this conversation with my wife.  For the following dialogue Me (M), my wife (W):

W: Did I just see what I thought I saw?
M: I don’t know what you thought you saw, but I think I saw a gazelle. The color was too dark for a deer, but the ears, the head? Definitely not a domesticated animal.
W: No, I think it was your garden variety deer.
M: Could be.  The farmer has added a lot of domesticated animals.  I doubt if he would shift to exotics at this point.
W: But a deer in sheep’s clothing?  The flock does not seem to mind.
M: Maybe it is a deer in llama clothing.  It is grazing closer to them.
W: I guess they all know that they are cousins.  No one seems surprised.

The farmer in question had only cows when I first passed his farm on the way to work almost 25 years ago.  He had a couple of horses too.  Then he got sheep.  Then llamas.  Then alpacas.  Then goats.  And at some point, donkeys started to appear.  But on this day, as we drove past the farm, a deer stared at us.  When I returned with camera ready, it was too busy grazing, showing its hind quarters to me, but that brown back side in the photo is a deer.  The llamas are all around the deer, and the flock of sheep are just out of the photo.

This may be a rather short post, but it makes me think of how they are getting along with one another, the wild and the domesticated, while we humans say that we are civilized, but we cannot get along.

You can see that the llamas are sheared. Soon after this photo, it became shearing season for the sheep, and the deer was nowhere to be found.  Smart deer!

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.