Now you are the body of Christ, and individual members of it. 1 Corinthians 12:27
Several years ago I spotted a television program about a dog that riveted me to my seat. For sixty minutes, I didn’t move. It was about a little black-and-white border collie named Sadie. The setting was the pristine hills of Scotland. Lucien O’Grady, a fifth-generation sheepherder, was the narrator, and the footage was of this incredible dog keeping the sheep in line, flawlessly herding them exactly as she had been taught.
O’Grady described how he communicated with Sadie. Sometimes his signals were audible, and sometimes they came from the simplest hand motions, but in every case Sadie was impeccably dutiful. When she completed a task, Sadie returned to O’Grady for his approval, a small treat, and, perhaps, another assignment.
Then the sheepherder showed us how Sadie could move the flock from one hillside to another. He gave his dog the signal, and immediately she ran off to obey. I wish you could have seen this incredible animal doing what she had been carefully trained to do. The sheep didn’t seem at all interested in being moved from one lovely spot to any other. So when the border collie began to bark, running at the docile sheep to dismiss them from their afternoon snack, she wasn’t warmly welcomed. The sheep looked thoroughly annoyed. They began to bleat a pathetic-sounding whimper. “Go away. Leave us alone,” they begged in “Sheepese.”
But Sadie was not to be dissuaded. Once she had the flock’s attention, she began to move them toward the new hillside according to O’Grady’s direction. Most of the sheep moved in the right direction, but a few didn’t budge. And some—either defiantly or stupidly—trotted off in the opposite direction. Sadie knew exactly what to do in each of these situations. Sometimes she’d bark. Sometimes she’d nip at a sheep’s bony legs. One time she just stood there, studying the face of a particularly rebellious sheep. “I will win this,” her eyes challenged the rebel. “You can go to the next hill peacefully, or you can go against your will, but you will go. I promise you that.” In a few moments the sheep acquiesced.
Eventually, the flock was in its new space. While the sheepherder watched, Sadie had moved a hillside-full of wooly creatures with perfection. During most of the process, she had been in a dead run, full speed, nonstop. When she was finished, she came running—it seemed impossible that she’d have any energy left—back to Lucien O’Grady. He lovingly patted her nose, saying, “Good girl, Sadie. Good girl.” The dog lay down next to her master, waiting for her next assignment.
The apostle Paul may have been thinking about a flock of sheep when he wrote, “Now you are the body of Christ, and individual members of it” (v. 27). There are big sheep and little sheep, compliant sheep and defiant sheep, slothful sheep and industrious sheep, but every single one is an important member of the flock.
And although he didn’t see the special show about Sadie, I’m sure he would have told us what a perfect image she was of a dad, running at full speed, armed with instructions from the Master, then skillfully and successfully moving each of these lambs to the next hill, knowing precisely what to do with each one.
I’m amazed by the wisdom of our Master and the skill of this dog.