Coming Storms in a Cold World? How to Thaw (& Why Your Heart Can’t Afford to Grow Cold)

The water froze for my flock of sheep yesterday. My fingertips burn with January cold as I pick away at the ice. Strangely, the world can feel deeply heated and icy all at the same time.  Storms blowing in can make us turn inward—to build, through a million little decisions, our own little ice castles of self-protection – where we think we’re safe and secure, but no water still runs, and we end up dying of thirst inside our own defenses. At the far end of the sheep fold, I try cracking the water well’s ice with my feed pail, with the heel of my boot. But the silver circle of ice, frozen in the standing water well at end of the sheep fold, refuses to budge. And somehow, my sheep need water, the mama ewes, Jewel and Krown, and their lambs, all the lambs, standing there by the hay rack, slowly chewing their cud, they need the water to somehow still run, even in these temperatures. Somehow, even when the world grows cold, the flock still has to drink. ” Forecasts can predict, but there’s a Good Shepherd who always protects all of His sheep. “ I haul back to […]