Sheep and shepherds are foreign to me. I know that sheep produce wool and meat. I have heard that shepherds look after them. But I have never seen a real crook and the only shepherd I have seen was at Agribition in Regina and she was a woman.

So the 23rd Psalm is foreign to me also  and the symbolism doesn't mean much to people any more. This is not an image that they are familiar with.

Shepherds, to me, would conger up ther images. The folk in daycares who look after children while the parents run from one job to another.

I have just posted my story and sermon for tomorrow as a blog.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/salomonsen/6424624257/

A beautiful picture by Ole C. Salomonsen.

A reminder to celebrate the heavenly host, however you understand it.

Maybe, just maybe, thousands of years ago, shepherds on a hillside beheld a sight like this and found renewed hope.

Maybe, just maybe, those shepherds felt, for just a few moments, that though the were lowly citizens of their time, they were a beautiful and perfect part of one universe.