I snapped my last shot and walked away from the bleating ewes, fairly satisfied with the results, fairly happy to leave it at that. But on leaving I practically walked over a small lamb, trapped between rocks and stinging nettles, lying motionless in the mud. I could try and explain to you what I felt, but honestly, it's all starting to blur. I remember staring at it's feeble, gut wrenching efforts to free itself, confused and shouldering a feeling of helplessness. I know the lamb never made a sound. A human urge to help drove me forward as I surveyed it's dirty, weak body- it must have been there for a long long time already... with my own heart beating a little faster, I stroked its back, a faint blue N just visible beneath the dirt, and I could feel the desparate, drumming blood beating faintly through it's chest. I picked it up. The bones were scarily evident through the short curls of white and muddied fur. I lifted it up out of the rocks and freed it from the nettles, and arranged it on the grass instead. I went and got some milk and attempted to feed it. Despite my best efforts, somewhere in the process, the lamb with the N on it's back died.
It was a... strange experience. Not one I've ever had before. I felt so responsible for that life. I tried to help it, but in the end I may have killed it out of sheer fear. Maybe it's neck was already broken. I'm not sure. All I know is that I felt, and still feel, sorrow for that innocent lamb that ended before it truly began. It's sort of silly, crying over a lamb. They're killed all the time. In Old Testament times they were sacraficed daily. We eat them today! But they're such a symbol or innocence, a standard of something good, that it hurt to watch that struggle to survive. It reminded me of another lamb, the ulitmate lamb, the Lamb of God. While the small baby sheep I encountered today died no doubt because of an accident, the Lamb I believe in died on purpose. This Lamb was the ultimate sacrafice, he died so we don't have to, his innocence exchanged for our corrupted sin, evil and muddied experience. Easters almost here. The lamb reminded me of my saviour... and perhaps for that reason, it didn't die in vain.
