Insight for Living Canada - LifeTrac Podcast - The Right Rut

Life track with Chuck Swindall is a presentation of insight for living Canada.

If you could be any animal, which one would you choose?

Those are the kind of things you love to ask children.

I can just hear some little perky girl say,

I'd like to be a mink that way I've got a built-in fur coat.

Or some kid will say, some boy, well, I'd like to be a gorilla.

Get to go barefoot all day and pound on my chest and grunt and swing through the trees and be great.

And I was a little boy, I wanted to be an elephant,

wanted to squirt all that water through my nose.

Although that'd be wonderful, great big ears, great big feet.

Funny as often as I may have asked that question to children,

I've never heard one of them say, I want to be a sheep.

Children tend to agree with nations, no nation is chosen as sheep as an emblem.

We here in the United States have chosen an eagle,

stately gallant eagle, soaring high,

always impressive in flight,

we're like eagles.

Across the Atlantic, great Britain has chosen the lion, of course,

standing guard of the gate.

Russia, the top of the food chain, the bear.

Never a sheep.

Sometime ago a man wrote a book in which he called us a nation of sheep,

and we rightly took it as an insult.

We're not a nation of sheep.

I mean, stop and think, the resume of sheep,

you're really not that impressive.

Sheep lack any sense of direction.

They easily get lost.

Sheep are virtually defenseless.

They don't have claws or sharp teeth.

They're not camouflage.

Those spindly legs, they can't run.

And you ever heard one growl?

That's not going to scare any animal ever.

They're not intimidating.

They're easily frightened, they're easily panicked.

They're quite honestly dirty and unkept.

Have a friend of mine who kept sheep for a summer.

Ever seen a northbound end of a southbound sheep?

Isn't very pretty.

They're unable to find their own nourishment, food or water.

The only worthwhile thing they ever produce

is taken from them on a regular basis.

They just lie down and give it up.

Put bluntly, sheep are stupid.

You and I have never seen a circus act of trained sheep ever

because you can't train them.

I'm indebted to Ron Allen for this insight.

As he writes of it in his fine work, Lord of Song.

Hill sides in the Judean wilderness are scored

with parallel paths moving along the contours of the hillside.

Once we stopped a bedo and shepherd

and spoke to him with the aid of our Arabic-speaking driver.

After some polite preliminaries, we asked why it was

that he was on that path and not on another.

Because this is my path for my sheep.

Each path was the path of a particular shepherd.

As he would walk his path, his sheep would follow along

behind in single file, keeping to the right rut.

Isn't that good wording? The right rut.

Reminds me of the sign that appears just as you go into Alaska.

Choose your rut carefully.

You'll be in it for the next 200 miles.

This is the right rut, with no shepherd the sheep

would scatter all over the hillside.

We're all like sheep, and we need a shepherd.

Fortunately, we have one, Jesus Christ.

He guides us, protects us, and keeps us in the right rut.

Listen to more of Chuck Swindall's Life Track messages

at lifetrack.ca. That's L-I-F-E-T-R-A-C.

Life track, where life and truth meet.

The preceding Life Track presentation was brought to you

by Insight for Living Canada.

The original message, God's comfort in Psalm 23,

was copyrighted in 2005, and the Life Track sound recording

was copyrighted in 2012 by Charles R. Swindall Incorporated.

All rights are reserved worldwide.