Feed My Lambs

Having completed all our 2024 trip trustee duties at the four Ugandan schools under HOPE In Africa, a Headmistress from a government school who’d also started two of her own asked us to visit all her students with words of encouragement, having caught us at Lugazi Pentecostal Church.

By the time we’d visited her primary and secondary schools, it was nearing lunchtime at the government school that catered mainly for children of factory workers at the refinery. Lugazi is renowned for its sugar cane, but as sweet as it tastes unrefined, the melting molasses pong enough to make you forget any appetite. Even so, not to waylay their meal, I prayerfully sought inspiration for a short and sweet message, my mind instantly getting a nose for the memories scents evoke.

Peter dived from a fish-swamped boat, swimming ashore to warm himself by the fire his Lord had prepared to barbeque their catch. As the smoke filled his nostrils, Jesus graciously took him back to the charcoal fire in the temple courtyard where Peter had denied him three times, giving fresh opportunity for Peter’s faith not to peter out. Twice Jesus asked if he loved Him with God’s Agape Love, to which each time Peter replied that Jesus knew he loved Him with a brotherly philios love. The third time Jesus relented and asked if Peter loved him with brotherly affection, meeting his friend mercifully at his point of need to restore him in fellowship and ministry.

The first time Peter was gifted the opportunity to proclaim his love, Jesus replied, “Feed My Lambs.” The second time, “Tend My Sheep.” The third, “Feed My Sheep”.  Of course there is a natural progression here, and one would hope that Christians ought continue from the sincere milk of the first principles of the Gospel towards ruminating over more solid food as per Hebrews chapter 5’s warning against perpetual infantilism, that the sheep of His pasture might get a taste for His Voice. But it also stands to reason that Jesus’s call to minister to tender youths and vulnerable lambs first was rather topsy-turvy to a fisherman. Peter practiced throwing the tiddlers back into the wilds of the sea whilst hauling the fully-grown into his boat, but here, Jesus prioritises feeding the newborn until they can be tended to feed some more.

The beautiful story of Jairus’s daughter also reassures us this wasn’t an afterthought for Jesus, for the Aramaic greeting He spoke to the lass asleep in death, “Talitha cumi!” meant “Little lamb, arise!” - And what did He go on to say but that something should be given her to eat.

Such sweet practical concern for little lambs shan’t neglect the flock more full of years, for Jesus still found time along the way to pause to address an elderly lady with issues as “Daughter”, validating her faith and her preciousness.  And when we begin with children’s food then though the crowd be counted five thousand for the towering heads of each family yet a little boy’s lunch can feed them all and more besides in the hands of prayerful faith. 

“You give them something to eat”, Jesus said, and there I concluded my thoughts for the rumbling of tummies, but I’d press on a little further in this devotional to suggest we never allow our lambs to be pushed to the periphery like Eutychus of Acts 20 v7-12, where Paul went on to preach until midnight and a youth perched precariously on a window ledge drifted off in the heat of the lamp-lights to fall to his premature death. Though Eutychus was resurrected once embraced, Jesus guarded against spiritual drift in not only calling the little children to come to Him, but setting them in the very midst as an example.

Matthew 18 v1-5 rather coyly says, Jesus’s disciples came to Him about that time to ask, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” but Mark 9 v33-37 has them squirming over Jesus rather politely referring to their ungainly squabble as “What were you discussing on the road?”  You’d think in this context that Jesus would set a child in their midst as an example of how not to be so childish, but contrariwise He exhorted them to be more childlike still.

1Corinthians 13 v11-13 might begin, ‘When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things’, but this merely highlights how lack of language can curb our understanding and practice like a bawling toddler in a tizzy whilst this passage is in fact the culmination of a poem concerning the more excellent way of Love.  Childishness is sin’s stuntedly self-centred caricature of what it is to be a child, whilst childlikeness remains the beautiful expression of growing into sonship.  Jesus not only says you must turn from your sins to become like little children to even enter the Kingdom of God, but His Kingdom continues to belong to those who remain childlike in humble dependency on Him. The latter was His rebuke to the disciples scolding parents only the very next chapter in Mark for bringing their children to be blessed.  Tellingly, the story of the rich young ruler in verse 20 of Mark 10 further illustrates the point in the materialist’s reply, “…since I WAS young”, the man having prematurely aged himself with the cares of this world to be too decrepit for the world to come.

Coming full circle to the time just before Peter denied his Lord, the disciples still didn’t get it in Luke 22 v20-30, where Jesus is only just instituting Holy Communion to find them arguing again who’d be the greatest after questioning who could betray Him. Jesus encourages Peter to return to childlike dependence on Him in verse 32, though Peter crows bravado. Jesus calls Peter to strengthen his brothers and sisters once returned, whilst his faith never fails due to the intercession of his Christ.

If any of us feel strongly enough that we have something to offer, then let any strength such as we’re gifted be expended in strengthening those around us, whilst humbly considering how we may need strong encouragement in our turn, for God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble, so we humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may raise us up in due time.