Hand of God?

As someone raised in the Lutheran "God helps those that help themselves" tradition and as a current member of the Episcopalian Church, I'm usually not much for believing in God's daily intervention in my life.

My father, the ever obstreperous parishioner (see the previous post on how he told his temperance-minded preacher that Jesus' first miracle was making wine for drunks at a party), has also opined that he thinks it is ridiculous that his minister attributes everything good to God's divine grace and everything bad to something the victim did to deserve it.

I'm about to relate my "I think God intervened in my life yesterday story." I do so with a feeling in my gut that it is true, but I'm also intellectually aware that the idea of God intervening to save a sheep's life is rather silly if he didn't intervene to save the live of the recently killed girl in Florida. So take the following story as you will.

On Sunday in church, during the sermon, I suddenly felt really faint. My wife tells me my pallor went entirely grey. We left early and I came down and laid down for most of the afternoon. I felt like gopher puke.

Things got a little better in the evening and I managed to get outside to plant some potatoes with Emilie and Sally. I definitely wasn't myself because I was panting after hoeing a twenty foot row.

When I woke up in the morning, I felt kind of lousy again. I would have gone to work anyway, but a little voice in my head told me to take it easy - I had been really sick the day before. The deciding factor was that my family was leaving for a week in Florida, so I could say goodbye if I slept in.

Rather than be hurried with my morning barn chores, I went out a little later (in daylight). I noticed Wooly, my daughter's favorite ewe, laying down all by herself in the upper pasture. If I had not called in sick, I would have missed her entirely.

I walked up and found her lying down, panting, with a giant lamb's head sticking out. She had obviously been straining to pass her baby for hours and had given up. The legs were tucked back inside the womb so the baby couldn't move forward. The baby looked deader than a doornail, so I grimly moved in to try to save my ewe.

I reached inside, found a foreleg, pulled it gently out, but could not find the other leg. I gripped the dead lamb around the midsection and pulled until it came out. I laid the body aside to tend to Wooly - and it coughed! Wooly, excellent mother that she is, clambored to her feet and began licking and nuzzling it.

The baby was huge - as big as one of my two-week old lambs (we later measured it at 11 pounds).

I went inside to call the vet and see if I should do anything else for Wooly. When I returned five minutes later, Wooly had dropped a second lamb (half the size) right next to the first. I guess I must have unplugged the works. If I hadn't been sick I would have lost all three of them.

This is one of those times when you take a deep breath and say "Thank you, God!"

I may still lose the lamb that was stuck - it had a really hard time. Keep your fingers crossed and stay tuned.