The Goats in the meadow !

The above goats belonging to our neighbour are normally in the meadow for most of the day. Their rhythm is graze and rest. 

At any time of the day, a few would be grazing and the others would be lying down for a nap or resting.

I get an opportunity to watch them for a while one Sundays. 

I watch their behaviour with some interest.  They do not convey hurry or haste to feed. They do it with ease and leisurely. They are in the midst of plenty of grass. There is time till evening  when they would be led back to their shelter.

Of late, I have suffered from anxiety on account of the work place situation and my desire to draw my forty years of clinical work to a close. I am in a state of dilemma. 

The dilemma is on account of concern about he continuity of the service which has evolved into what it is now over the last ten years. In September 2022, when we enter to the eleventh year, I stay with a thought, 'is it stable enough to survive another decade'!

This preoccupation with  'tomorrow' has been with me for a while now. 

I have watched how the goats arrive at the meadow in the morning and leave in the evening. They have a body language of being cared for! The gentleman who brings them in the morning and leads them back to their shelter in the evening, calls each of the goats by name! The goats respond and follow the instruction. When he brings drinking water for them during mid-day, they keep looking at him even from a distance. Theirs is a dependent  life. 

This sight raised with me a question, 'what is the level of my dependance'! The Psalm 23, where the passage begins by expressing this dependance has come home in a new way: 'The Lord is my shepherd, therefore I shall not want'.

This is the strength and confidence because we are called to be dependent on God who leads us!

Easy to state but not so easy while working this out in the regular life situations!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)