Let’s say a man owns 10,000 sheep
What is the loss of a single lamb to him?
What is the loss of just ten
In any given year?
The shrewd shepherd knows
How to make two or more
Just disappear
The owner won’t give them a second thought
He’s got bigger fish to fry
As it were
Other flocks to acquire
The loss of one just doesn’t matter
Let’s say a man owns a thousand
It just won’t do to have ten
Go “astray”
Best content yourself with one
Bit if a man owns one hundred
He will search high and low
For just a single lost lamb
Don’t be caught red-handed
The man who has just one
Is to be pitied most of all
For the loss of his sheep matters
It matters a great deal
Aspire, then, to own a flock of 10,000
Or to work for the man who does
Forget about what you ought to do
Just do what makes sense
This is sound advice
Everyone here agrees
Even my boss commends me
If only it just weren’t so damned hot
“A righteous king is coming, and honest princes will rule under him. … Justice will rule in the wilderness and righteousness in the fertile field” (Is. 32). Peter can see that something isn’t quite right in Jesus’ parables about the “unworthy steward” and the rich man in Luke 16. His inward assessment runs like this: “Let me tell you how to shortchange God — and then won’t you be happy to receive me into your eternal hell-hole?” He writes this piece to make sense out of a piece of difficult teaching.