Lost Goats, Found Lambs

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University
Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path. Psalm 119:105
How Not to Get the Goat
歧路亡羊 [Qi Lu Wang Yang: "Forked Road Lost Goat"]
A famous scholar, Yang Zu, who lived in China during the Warring States period (475-221 B.C.) asked a neighbor why he gathered such a large crowd to find his lost goat. The farmer said, "I need all the help I can get because there are so many twisting and turning paths. The goat could be anywhere." The crowd searched long and hard but never found the goat. [I guess someone "got his goat."]

A few days later, a student saw Yang Zu looking pre-occupied and said, "Master, surely you are not still worrying about the lost goat?"

Yang Zu said, "I'm not thinking about the goat but about the haphazard way they looked for it. They all had good intentions, but they just wandered onto any path they came upon, hoping to blunder into the goat. Before starting out they should have staked out every inch and methodically searched the fields. They never had any hope of finding it."

And so for 2400 years, the saying "Forked Road Lost Goat" has been used to exhort Chinese about to start a venture to have 1) a clear goal, 2) a good plan, and 3) careful execution.

Searching for our Goats Too many lives are lived as aimlessly as the farmer searching for his goat. How often we shred our shoes on rocky ground and snag our clothes on briars and brambles when if we listened to that small voice or read the Word, our Father would point out a clear path straight to the goal--which is not a search for a lost goat but a race towards the Lamb.

1. Clear Goal. There is more to life than just eating, sleeping, working, retiring, and dying. Our Father had a clear goal in creating us. He created us for a purpose--for good works prepared long before our birth, and long before the goat was even lost. Ephesians 3:10 (NAS): "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." The goal, of course, determines our path ("so that we should walk in them.") So what are your goals?

Do What Needs to be Done. I have always been very goal-oriented. Even when I was very young I taped goals to my bedroom wall. But I learned early on that my Father's goals are far more fruitful, and satisfying than anything I could come up with myself. And so I switched gears and decided to "take no thought for tomorrow" (Matt. 6:34). I now follow a simple daily goal: "do what needs to be done, here and now."

This is smarter than it sounds, because I don't think my Father plays games with me. If I am obedient, my Father gives me opportunities to do good right where I am, and if I do them well, He gives me more, and sometimes bigger, things to do. As Jesus said in Matthew 25:23, "You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things."

I'm now 52 and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, but I don't worry it because I know that if I do well what is in front of me today, my Father will use it to prepare me for more things tomorrow.

2. A Good Plan I have blundered down so many wayward paths seeking that elusive goat, and yet in retrospect I can marvel at how my Father really has worked everything for good. Not everything was good, of course, but He did work everything for my good. No experience is wasted; each thing I've done, whether good or bad, has taught me, and been used for my good (Romans 8:28)--though some lessons were more painful than others. How often I have wished that the school of hard knocks could be taken by correspondence.

What a plan our Father must have if He can weave all of the tangled loose ends of my life into a seamless design! But how much easier it would be on me if I followed the plan, which his Spirit and Word will reveal to me if I look to Him instead of my own ingenious stratagems.

3. Careful execution. I must not only serve but do so with the right attitude and purpose. If I do good works out of self-serving pride rather than love of God or others, I may do more harm than good. Romans 8:28 says "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God..." And Jesus said in Mark 12:30,31 that we must "love others as ourselves." So as I execute my Father's plan, I must be careful that I do it all in love--for God, and for others.

Not a Goat but a Lamb. Fortunately, we are not searching blindly for a lost goat because we have already been blessed with a Lamb. We are engaged not in a search but in a race, and that great cloud of witnesses is watching to see whom we seek to honor: our Father or ourselves, the Lamb or the goat.

Happily for us, race courses are usually laid out clearly, lest we run off the track or try to take short cuts to the prize--and our Father's course is no exception. We have a beginning and an end, and rules on how to run it. We don't know how long the race will be, but we do know how to run it: unencumbered, and with endurance. As Paul wrote in Hebrews 12:1, "Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us."

So let's stop searching for the goat and run the race for the Lamb!

The Chinese painting of Jesus is from: "The Life of Christ by Chinese Artists," The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. 15 Tufton Street, Westminster, S.W.1 1940 Distributing Agents for the U.S.A., Krug Chinese Imports, 2227 St. Paul Street, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.

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