Westy's Weekly Blog

The Lord God is not paying us any compliments when He calls us His ‘sheep’. Memories of my childhood include vivid images from the sheep station in central Victoria where we grew up as children.   In fact, our first ‘home’ in this land was a shearing hut – the temporary residence of the shearing crews that would annually come and relieve the sheep of their heavy fleeces.   The nearby shearing shed was a mixture of non-too-pleasant smells.   Sheep droppings, tallow, greasy wool, and sheep dip. Over the years we became familiar with the routines.   Two things stood out. First, that sheep needed a lot of work.   Unlike cattle, which were let loose in the back paddocks and largely left to fend for themselves, the sheep were forever being rounded up for some sort of attention.   Not only was there the annual shearing time ‑ a highlight on the sheep station calendar.   The sheep would also be brought in for foot-rot treatment.   Then there would...

  Recently two young men I know were both unexpectedly taken from this life.   Both had taken their roles as husbands and fathers seriously.   Both had young children still in primary school.   To say that their departures left a huge gap in their respective families would be a massive understatement.   It traumatised not only their immediate families.   Their wider families too were devastated by the loss of a brother, an uncle, a son.   So were the churches in which they had been seriously involved. My heart goes out to their widows.   Being a single mum is not for the faint-hearted – as some of you well know from experience.   I sympathise too with these children who will grow up without a Dad at home.   In such situations it’s always a blessing when an uncle or Granddad or some other significant male steps into the breach.   Of course what helps too is that in both instances this happened in Christian families and Christian ...