By Carol Bolden
The St. John family had just finished their traditional Christmas Eve supper of warm potato soup, homemade bread slathered with butter and blackberry jam, and apple cider. The two children hurried into the living room as Mom cleared the table, Dad stoked the fire, and Grandpa claimed his favorite chair. They sat at Grandpa’s feet waiting for the stories he invariably told during a family gathering after a full meal.
One forgotten ornament sat on the coffee table waiting to be placed on the tree—a lone lamb. It seemed to catch the eye of both children at the same time, and each grabbed at it, greedy for the privilege of hanging it on the tree. As they fought to gain control, the fragile lamb broke and crumbled onto the floor. Shocked, they looked at each other with accusing eyes and began quarreling.
“Listen, kids,” said Grandpa. “The lamb is broken and there’s nothing to be done. Why don’t you just sit down and listen to a story. Do you want to hear a story about a lamb?” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” the children cried in unison, looking somewhat chagrined. So Grandpa began. “A long time ago, when I was a young boy and lived on our farm in Montana, my job was to take care of my father’s sheep. I guess you could say I was a shepherd because Charlie, my border collie, and I made sure they had food and water and watched out for their safety.
“One December night, when I was about 15, with snow piling up in drifts against the house and a freezing wind howling, I awoke with a start. Charlie’s cold nose had awakened me. I knew something was wrong by the way he was acting, so I dressed in wooly layers and followed him out through the blowing snow toward the barn.
“There, within twenty feet of the barn, lying in a muddy patch of ice, lay a bleating ewe. She looked distressed and unable to rise from her cold bed. But Charlie had something else on his mind. He led me to a shivering, newborn lamb struggling to gain his footing on feet and legs completely unused to standing.
“I hadn’t expected the lamb to come so soon, but it was here now and needed care. With old rags I found in the barn, I rubbed the lamb dry and put it in a stall with dry hay. Then I did the same with the ewe, so that mother and baby were together in the stall, dry and warm. The ewe found renewed strength when she heard the bleating of her baby and the lamb was soon nuzzling the ewe.
“All was well in the barn, so I headed back through the blowing snow into the warm house and my warm bed, leaving Charlie to look out for the sheep. I knew he would be plenty warm inside the barn and he didn’t seem to want to follow me back to the house. He always took his job seriously.
“Warmed by my cozy bed, I fell into a deep sleep, a sleep uninterrupted until, again, I woke with a start, this time unexplainably because Charlie was not there. The clock read 4 a.m. What am I doing awake at this hour? I wondered. I turned over and tried to go back to sleep, but something was wrong. I could sense it. I don’t know how I knew, but something was off.
“I forced myself out of bed, pulled on the clothes I’d discarded on the floor just a few hours earlier and headed out into the snow. The beauty and peace were magnificent. The winter moon shone on the pure, white snow. My previous tracks were covered over with fresh snow, so my feet sank into new drifts with each step. Reaching the barn, I called out for Charlie, but there was no answer. In fact, the stall where I’d left the ewe and her lamb was empty.
“Where in the world could they be? I checked the other stalls, but found nothing. Then I headed out into the snow. Why would they have left the warmth and safety of the barn and why would Charlie let them, I wondered? Not sure where to look, I headed uphill to the fence. Finding nothing, I followed the fence line toward the back of the property.
“Before long, I stumbled over something in the snow and realized it was the ewe, dead and frozen. Just beyond the ewe, I discovered Charlie. He, too, was dead, but below him lay the lamb, warm and alive. He had done his job at the cost of his life. He had saved the lamb.
“I scooped up the tiny, wooly lamb and hurried to the house. It looked like I would have a babysitting job. She would need to be bottle-fed. A lot of my time over the next few months was spent taking care of that lamb, but while I cared for her, I did a lot of thinking. I tried to re-create in my mind what happened that night when Charlie saved the lamb’s life.
“I never did figure it out, but I learned a lot about responsibility and love as I thought about what Charlie had done. And I learned about trust as I watched Evie—which is what I named her because she was born on Christmas Eve— develop complete trust in me, the one who fed and cared for her in every way.
The faraway look in Grandpa’s eyes disappeared as he again focused on the children. “Can you kids think of a story in the Bible about a lamb?” Grandpa asked.
The children looked thoughtful as they searched their memories. “Didn’t the Israelites sacrifice a lamb in the temple for their sins?” asked Matthew, the oldest boy.
“That’s right,” Grandpa confirmed.
“Isn’t there a story about a sheep that went astray?” exclaimed Mary, the little sister. “The shepherd looked for it until he found it and brought it back to the sheep fold.”
“That’s a good one, too,” Grandpa encouraged. “The story of the lamb runs all through the Bible beginning with the story of Abraham being asked to kill Isaac. It continues with a special ceremony, called Passover, in Egypt where the Israelites were instructed to kill a lamb and put its blood over the doorpost. And it runs through the Passover supper with Jesus and His disciples.”
Grandpa explained that in all situations a lamb is offered as a sacrifice for a debt. “When John the Baptist who saw Jesus approaching on the road, he pointed to him and said: ‘Behold the lamb of God.’ By this, he meant for us to understand who Jesus is and the debt He paid for us with His death,” Grandpa told us.
The children were quiet until Grandpa said, “Why don’t we finish off the night with a cup of hot chocolate? Maybe we should pick up the broken lamb first.”
There was no more fighting now. Each child gladly shared in the clean up. Maybe it had something to do with the Lamb.
–Carol Bolden is RMC administrative assistant for communication.