Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 10 verses 7 through 15:
7 So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.
Last week I was given a book on the history of the XIT Ranch by J Evetts Haley. When I was a boy my uncle lived in Mr. Haley's former home in Canyon, Texas and I spent many a weekend there as a child; so the book has a personal connection.
The XIT ranch was comprised of 3,000,000 acres of land given by the Texas Legislature in exchange for the building of the Texas State Capitol Building. Because the allotment included part or all of ten counties in the Panhandle of Texas the ranch took its brand "XIT" in reference to the "Ten in Texas".
The book tells the story of the constant struggles the ranch foremen had with bad cowboys who made their way onto the Plains ranch mostly after being fired or chased off from everywhere else they'd ever worked. Drinking, gambling, and simple dereliction were constant problems. Alcohol-fueled gun violence was enough of a threat that the carrying of firearms was strictly forbidden amongst the cowboys.
And theft of livestock was something to be constantly watched out for. All sorts of schemes were cooked up by crooked cowboys to steal cattle for personal profit. There were colluding efforts to sell calves before they were branded, or to "hair brand" rather than "hide brand" the calves so the brand would be lost once the coat came in full. And then there were efforts to rebrand the cows with all kinds of creative modifications of "XIT". Reading about these schemes made me think that these cowboys would really have done pretty well had they given their creative skills to good rather than ill.
Jesus did not know anything about cowboys; but he knew about shepherds. Drinking, gambling, dereliction, and theft were all known among the shepherds. Those were the preoccupations of the hired hands, who cared not a thing about the sheep nor their owner but only about their own personal gains. Just like there were bad cowboys all over the Panhandle, there were hired hands of dubious kind all over the hill country of Israel. A good shepherd was hard to find; when you found one you knew you had something worth keeping. If you did not find one then you had better learn to sleep with one eye open.
All this, for Jesus, was a parable for the nation and its leaders.
For we, like sheep, can be led astray and, like cattle, stolen by cowboys working for their own brand.
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