As I prep for my summer adventures in the Sierra, I started reading a book that Kendra gave me for Christmas. My First Summer in the Sierra.” Written by John Muir in 1869, it is a diary which chronicles Muir’s journey into the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
I have duplicated this same trip dozens of time in my own life, but Muir’s description of the animals, trees and the landscape are easy for me to reach from the memory banks of my mind. As I read along with his diary, I can picture myself traveling along with John Muir through his diary.
As I quickly got lost in this book, I was shocked to stumble upon this simple quote included in the image above. As Muir journeyed into the mountains he joined a company of travelers including a shepherd who was pushing his large flock of sheep out of the dry grass of central California to feast on the lush green meadows of the high Sierra for the summer. After camping in one location for several days, the sheep mowed down the majority of the green grass in camp and began to wander farther away for their meals.
Preparing to break camp, they realized they had lost over 100 of the sheep from the flock. The shepherd remained in camp with the existing sheep and instructed Muir and one of his hired hands to set out to track down the remaining lost sheep.
Muir details that he and his partner simply followed the dogs out of camp. Scurrying over one bluff and one valley they quickly found the sheep huddled close together. The flock was far enough away to be lost, but close enough to be found without much effort. The sheep had simply lost their way back to camp and were also too fearful to move forward. They had found the freedom to roam and graze at will, but as Muir reflects, “they seemed glad to get back into the old familiar bondage.”
Here is where my reading took a turn. This diary contains reflections made by John Muir. As a naturalist, Muir merely comments on the nature and behavior of sheep grazing in the hills and canyons of California. This reflection, however, sparked something in me that has little to do with Muir’s depiction of the Sierra and more to do with the behavior of people in the church.
To take this just a little deeper, whenever I hear about sheep, I think about all the sermons I have heard my entire life that compares sheep to the followers of Jesus. I could not help but see a simple connection here.
The statement about these lost sheep reminds me of Christians who taste the freedom that comes with salvation. The bible compares this to prisoners being set free from prison. In other places, we read about chains being dropped. The reference is always the same: freedom from sin. The good news (the gospel) is about a savior who doesn’t just free us from sin, but also from our own efforts and any work we attempt to save ourselves. Through faith (alone) by grace (alone) we can find salvation from God.
Yet, I seem to have met a lot of Christians who behave just like these sheep. Instead of living in the freedom of the gospel and celebrate the grace given to us by God, they choose instead to jump right back into the comfort of bondage. Given the freedom to roam and eat the green grass in front of them, these Christians seem glad to get back into the old familiar bondage of religion. Instead of living in freedom and trusting in Christ, they focus instead on their own effort, they depend on their own behavior and they rely upon their own hard work to not just save them, but to keep them in right relationship with God.
Again, the book is just a diary from John Muir. He shared only a few lines about these sheep. I recognize that I am pushing the similarities way more than Muir intended. Do you see it too? Can you relate? Let me know in the comments.
Quietly making noise,
Fletch