Give Up Now!
IllustrationStoryThe late Dr. Andrew Bonar once told me how, in the Highlands of Scotland, the sheep would often wander off amongst the rocks, and get into places that they couldn’t get out of. The grass on these mountains is very sweet, and the sheep like it; and they will jump down ten or twelve feet, and they can’t jump back again, and the shepherd hears them bleating in distress. They may be there for days until they have eaten all the grass.
The shepherd will wait until they are so faint they cannot stand, and then he will put a rope round him, and he will go over and pull that sheep up out of the jaws of death. “Why don’t they go down there when the sheep first gets there?”
I asked. “Ah!” he said, “they are so very foolish they would dash right over the precipice and be killed if they did!”
And that is the way with men; they won’t go back to God till they have no friends and have lost everything. If you are a wanderer, I tell you that the Good Shepherd will bring you back the moment you have given up trying to save yourself, and are willing to let Him save you his own way.
The point
Dr. Andrew Bonar tells how Highland sheep would wander into rocky places they couldn't climb back out of, tempted by the sweet grass there - and shepherds, rather than trying to coax them back, would sometimes have to break a leg to carry the sheep home safely, a hard mercy that keeps the sheep near the shepherd from then on.