I started sending this blog out to a few trusted friends today. And as I did, I realized that my trusted friends are more than I can count on my fingers and my toes. I am truly blessed. And these are the people I am willing to show something that I'm still pretty scared about, but something I'm feeling not only called to do but responsible to as I celebrate a new dimension of my calling.

So...here is the question of why. And I love that one dear friend said she loves the picture of the sheep and wants to know more about it.

Let me begin in such a way as to make a short story long.

I'm late to this blogging party. Not that I hadn't been invited. (And by that I mean invited in my heart, feeling as if it is something I ought to be doing and might even be able to do reasonably well and might actually be beneficial to my ministry and my congregation and might even, even, even be something somebody might want to read even if they didn't have to to spare my feelings.) I just took a long time getting a handle on it. And the technology was not the hardest part. (Thank you, Halley, and I'll make you chicken salad anytime!)

But I needed a core. I needed a defining and unifying and inspiring narrative...and it took me a long time to figure out that that was what was holding me back. In the lingo of our EfM groups (Education for Ministry...I'll see if I can find out how to link to that, but right now that is beyond my techie horizon, as is much else I'd like to be able to do...but I'll get to it), I needed the central metaphor.

So I took a day. I walked. I folded towels. I pushed piles of stuff around the house. I cooked a thing or two. I doodled and sat in the back yard watching the lesser goldfinches. (How come I don't get greater goldfinches. I buy the expensive niger seed.)

And at one point I asked myself, "OK, self, what is your favorite story in the Bible. I mean, you are actually a priest. You've pretty much read it. Pick one." So I did. It was the one where Elijah hands over his cloak to Elisha. No, wait. It is where Jesus hangs out with the woman at the well. No, wait. It is where the angels visit Abraham and Sarah. No, wait. It is the raising of Jairus' daughter. No, wait. It is Gabriel's visit to Mary, when she says, "Let it be to me according to your word." No, wait. Ooops, it is starting to sound like a ginsu knife commercial..."Wait, wait there is more...if you just order now you will get..." But I think you get it. I have dozens of favorite Bible stories.

And then there was clarity. Then there was the one story. The 21st chapter of John's gospel. Peter doesn't know what to do, so he reverts to what he knows, fishing. And they haven't caught anything. I'm not going to revisit it all. John 21. You can find it. Read it. Over and over. It is too wonderful for words.

Peter stands before Jesus, after eating his fish taco on the beach, feeling dirty. Feeling stained. The last time they looked at each other, Jesus was being taken away by Caiphas' goons in the middle of the night, and Peter was telling the young maid in the courtyard that no, he didn't know that guy. He failed the one he loved most. And now he is standing before him. Raised from the dead, no less.

Jesus takes Peter apart from the others, and if the words had come from anyone else, they would have been an accusation. But from Jesus they are an invitation. Simon, son of John, Do you love me more than these?
He said to him, Yes, Lord; you know I love you. Jesus said to him, Feed my lambs. Times three. Three strikes against the denials. Erase that blackboard and take the sponge to it.

Feed my lambs.

It's what I do. It's what I love. More about this later. Much more

And for the picture of the sheep? They are the sheep of dear friends who live in New Zealand and whose gorgeous ranch we visited in January.

But let me tell you something about taking this picture. It wasn't easy. I took lots of shots. With lots of time between shots. I wanted a picture of their faces, their eager smiling faces. Aren't they smiling?

But when sheep see you with a camera, they run. And I have many, many pictures of the rear ends of several hundred sheep, lambs, whatever, and I didn't think that would be quite the picture Jesus would have wanted for all of this, do you? Praise be to God for this one. And thank you, lambs. All of you, and I think you know who you are.