Parenting, Gate Keeping

Someone left the gate unlatched. The rains came hard in south Georgia yesterday and the goats stayed tucked away in their shelter most of the day, but at some point late in the day the gate swung open and out they walked. Their care giver came home late in the day to find that they had not gone far, still in the yard grazing close by their fenced in pen. Lottie and Dolly were easily rounded up and lead back into the pen for the night. However, at 2:30 AM I was awoken by my lovely wife with a penetrating question, “Do you hear the goats?” I had not heard goats nor seen sheep nor anything else since my head had hit the pillow 3 ½ hours ago until I heard her voice calling me awake. I climbed out of bed and went to the dinning room to open a window to listen for the goats, hearing nor seeing anything I went back to bed. Several minutes later I sat up straight in bed at the sound of loud and distorted bleating coming from the goat pen. I quickly pulled on my jeans and headed out to the goat pen in the dark of 2:45 AM reminding myself to never purchase a rechargeable flashlight. I arrived at the pen and found Lottie and Dolly in the pen with no visible intruders nor any apparent problems. I spoke with them a few minutes and returned to bed and spent the rest of the night uninterrupted by the bleating of goats.

With the light of day when all good people should be up I ventured out to the goat pen to hopefully get a clearer picture of what happened in the early morning hours. I found Lottie and Dolly lying in the goat pen with their heads tucked away in sleep. I had a difficult time waking them and when I finally got them free from their slumber they looked at me as though from a drunken stupor they were being stirred. At this point I realized that I was witnessing goats being goats. When the gate swung wide and they went free they apparently ate themselves sick upon something that goats should not eat. Their bleating through the night was a result of their upset stomachs and their stupor the next morning was the outcome of having been sick all night. What did I expect, I was standing in the presence of goats.

We have six children in our home of which all differ from one another greatly, and we have animals in and around our home of many different types. We have chickens that lay eggs and chickens that don’t lay eggs and get eaten for supper. We have a rabbit that stays outside and is often brought inside but has no inside manners to speak of. We have two dogs, one large and one small, both female, one with a masculine name, “Burton”, and one with a very feminine name, “Precious”, which I feel a little ridiculous calling while standing in our front yard. And we have two goats which I am promised will soon yield young and give us milk and cheese. But like the Israelites in the wilderness all I hear and see at this time is bleating. You may be wondering why I put the children in our home in the same paragraph with all the animals. To some of you with a more distorted way of thinking this may seem quite natural. My children have care of all these animals at our home, although I sure felt alone out in the yard at 2:45 AM this morning. But that brings me to my point. I and my wife have care of our children and in that care we are the gatekeepers. No, I do not see my children as goats until they jump over the fence by their own free will to become sheep. I see them as sheep who have been called into the sheep pen by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and he has put my wife and I in the gate to care for and nurture them in the salvation that God has wrought for them through Jesus Christ. In this responsibility I cannot leave the gate unlatched or open to let them freely walk about to “learn for themselves” so that they can learn who they are and how they must express themselves in this world. We must be diligent everyday to talk with them of their Lord while we sit with them, stand with them and walk by the way with them. We must do this with them until it is God’s time for them to leave our home to go the way he calls them for his own glory, so that when they walk out the gate they are following Christ as their Shepherd in the way of his will revealed to them through his Word. As parents there is an urgency about keeping the gate of the pens where dwell our Lord’s sheep that he has entrusted to us. Don’t leave the gate unlatched or open but keep the gate and lead them to their Lord and Savior where they will find that he is holy and merciful and his will is good.