Sheep pens

I read these verses from Psalm 78 this morning:

'He chose David his servant

    and took him from the sheep pens;

from tending the sheep he brought him
    to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,
    of Israel his inheritance.

And David shepherded them with integrity of heart;
    with skillful hands he led them.'

Sheep pens are smelly, generally fairly unpleasant places.  And being a shepherd was considered a job so menial that it was fobbed off on the lowest and the least.  Being the youngest of eight brothers, meant that this task fell to David.

I suspect that as David spent day after day after day watching the family flock he probably wondered what on earth his life could amount to.  There was little hope for promotion or even change.  That was his lot.  And so he had a decision to make.  Was he going to spend his life frustrated and angry, or was he going to embrace his role and do it to the best of his ability?  He went for the latter, little knowing that God was waiting for him to develop all the necessary skills he'd need for the astonishing plans God had in store.

One day, on a day like any other, his life suddenly changed.  He went from being a shepherd of sheep to a shepherd of men.  He was anointed King.  A nobody to the biggest Somebody.  

If you're a mother then your days will probably be spent like mine: clearing up toys, cleaning food from walls (my son's latest 'trick'), putting the washing on, taking it out, changing nappies...  It's fairly unglamourous work, but it needs to be done.  And yet we have a choice about our attitude when we do it.  Singing 'Yippee!' as we face the fifth nappy of the day might be a tad unrealistic, but thanking God that our child has a working bowel system (even as we wrinkle our nose) might not be (and if you snort then watch Born to be Different on 4OD).  

And who knows what these days are preparing us for?  God has plans for our lives and you never know when the ability to change a nappy whilst preventing a small child from crawling away might just come in very handy...