Letters to a friend(part 2)

I wroted a parable! :3

Date: 20/11/2007
Subject:baaaaah! 

So a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away. He
leaves the other 99 on the hill and he goes to look for that one stray
sheep.
Meanwhile, back on the hill, there are 99 scared little sheep left on
their own. Sheep being sheep, most of them stay right where they are.
However, one or two of them do wander off. Not too far for the most
part, but they do move further away from the flock and thus find
themselves at more of a danger to wolves. Indeed the wolves pick off a
couple.
They even come in close to the pen, and go right up to the sheep,
tempting them away from the flock. Some of the sheep follow them,
despite what sense they have telling them that it's safer amongst the
other sheep. Indeed the other sheep try to tell them this also. Of
course some of the sheep that the wolves try and pick off manage to
escape, back to the safety of then pen, and when the shepherd returns
the wolves
aren't going to be a problem any longer.

When I was at the youth assembly a few weeks back, one of the speakers
commented that nowadays the church seems to be more interested in
finding the lost sheep than in what's happening to the sheep that are
left behind on the hill. I doubt he was referring to the same subject
I just wrote that illustration on, admittedly: the subject of the
conference was all about being called to work within the church, but
nevertheless it did spark off an interesting point there.
So what about them? The fact of the matter is that sheep are in
danger, mainly from an outside influence. Now, I'm not saying by any
means that separation from the world's the answer. That's just stupid,
and Paul warned against it when he wrote to the Corinthians (although
he did say not to associate with Christians who follow an immoral
lifestyle. Sheep are known to be influenced by other sheep, you know).
But at the same time, the rest of the church is something that we have
to stay close to. The closer the sheep are to the wolves, the more
danger they're in. And the wolves can come in sheep's clothing, oh yes.


I'm gonna avoid rambling for the sake of rambling here, so this isn't
gonna be the massive huge essay a lot of my emails are. As always, I'd
be overjoyed to get at least one reply with an interesting discussion
of the points raised, and if anyone agrees, disagrees, thinks they can
expand upon, whatever, they should do.  God bless.

-Stephen