“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.” – Jeremiah 1:5

God is a genius.  He is always way out in front forging the contour of the good works he has pre-ordained that we would walk in (Ephesians 2:10).   He is incredibly creative in both the formal and informal ways he works to shape us for the future he has for us.  He works in ways we cannot see and often is doing things that are imperceptible at the time, but in retrospect leave the indelible imprint of the wisdom of God worked out in prior providence that has made its mark on our lives.  

I launch this blog with an explanatory first entry.  “Wilt Dairy: A View from the Milk House”.  What’s that?  Well, let me explain.

I grew up milking sweet Jersey cows on my uncle’s one hundred and twenty acres.  Unknown to me, God was using my time working next to my Uncle Dick to prepare me for pastoral ministry.  I have spent the last twenty five years of my life working hard at formal training for pastoral ministry.  But looking back, what I gleaned working next to my Uncle as he cared for his herd was at least as beneficial as the sum of my great training I received formally at Cedarville University, Dallas Theological Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. 

The Jersey herd was of modest size (around fifty active milking cows, with a retinue of dry cows out to pasture and always heifers coming on somewhere) but of immodest quality.   On test one year in the late sixties, Uncle Dick’s herd had tested one of the highest percentages of fat in the milk of any herd on test in Ohio.   While that’s Jerseys for you, he was out-fatting the other Jersey herds on test.  The parlor was unpretentious, stanchions for eight.  Six bunches and some stragglers and you were done.  An hour and forty five minutes and you were in and out…twice a day.

The cows were Uncle Dick’s livelihood.  That was back in the day when government subsidies for milk price still made it worth the while for a small family farm to milk.  The more I observed Uncle Dick around the herd the more I understood what made him tick and what got him out of bed in the morning-besides the call of the cows who yearned to be milked.  

One of the things I noticed first about being with him in the milking parlor was how he knew all of the cow’s names and he would use them.  They knew his voice and were responsive.  He would gently call out to them before kneeling beside them in the stanchion row before washing their teats to put the Milker on.  I had a sense that they knew he cared for them.  They moved over gently to let him in as he stepped in.  More than once I was not given such deference.  But I was just a plebe breaking in.  He had bred them.  He had fed them as calves.  He had bred their heifers and groomed them when they were sick.  He had preserved good blood lines and worked to maintain excellence in the herd.  But rarely did we yard cows (take them out of the herd to the stock yards for sale).  He made it work with them.  

To him this was not a job, this was a way of life.   The herd seemed to have a sense of that.  They seemed as eager to please him as he was to serve them and keep them going.   It was long summer days of bailing to make for sustenance through the winter.  It was periodic and careful mixing of the right ingredients to make the grain mix that they inhaled as they stood in the parlor.  The planting and harvest was all orchestrated around serving the enterprise of keeping the herd going.  It was a trust he kept with them, an unwritten contract of faithfulness to them. 

There was death and life in the herd.  Life was always so much more fun and death was rare.  I can only remember losing one cow.  Uncle Dick went down swinging trying to save her.  She ate something and went down in the field.  The night she died, they were out there holding her head with an IV in her neck trying to pull her through.  We drug her up the next morning for the road truck.  Uncle Dick knew that many things were out his hands as he cared for the herd.  

Oh the exhilaration of new birth!  Fresh cows with their calves are a wonder to behold.  The nurture that mom gives the fledging one as soon as it hits the ground is extraordinary.  God is way out in the front there too, having put in the udder just the right ingredients to push that young one off to a great start.  

In the long days of June full of light, glory and lush pasture, the cows would often be at the back of the fields at the very time we were to begin milking.  As long as Uncle Dick was around, we were way good.  He had a distinct call for them that was something like a cross between “sooie” and “suck” drawn out in some sweet Arkansas accent, slow and deliberate and articulated with passion.  But the marvel was that one call, and then another and the herd would respond.  Down they would come from the back of the fields.  We would all try to mimic that call.  But none could do it like Uncle Dick.  

The cows are gone now and Uncle Dick has out stripped three score and ten by ten years.  He still drives the tractor for some bailing and gets involved in planting and harvest, but now no shepherding is required on the farm.  The days of the stock are gone.  

But for most of the seventies God was teaching me, albeit unconsciously, about the finer disciplines of shepherding the flock.  The leader knows their names and their character and nurtures their health and feeds them well.  He is always thinking of their welfare and how to keep them going strong and with vigor.  He puts their needs ahead of his own and lays himself down for their good.  The best are most responsive.  But even in a good herd, they are not all angels.  I think I remember Dutchess even kicking him a few times.  But, certainly she tried more wacks at me than she ever gave Uncle Dick…his whole career.  

So I left the farm, graduating from the school I did not even know I had enrolled in.   I finished the course I did not know I signed up for: shepherding the flock.  I was next to a model deeply devoted to his herd.  They were his calling.  He was faithful.  He was to those Jersey girls what King David was to Israel as he had led so long ago “with the skillfulness of his hands and the integrity of his heart”  Psalm 78:72.

It was a modest work that not too many noticed.  But it was good work.  You don’t have to be noticed to do good work.  For fun and playfully one night in the milk house, we invented the name “Wilt Dairy”.  Oh sure, Young’s (Yellow Springs, Ohio) had their dairy, but we were the Wilts.  My cousin Doug and I forged the name one night finishing up.  It stuck.  The next night I went to work with my orange milk hat with the newly minted letters on the front “W” “D”.   We all still smile when we think of that title.  Hence, the name of this blog.

Two thousand years ago, God entered history in the person of His son Jesus Christ.  He is the great Shepherd of God’s sheep.  He pursued us, even when we were disinterested in Him and estranged from him because of our sin.  In his great love for us, he laid down his life on the cross taking the punishment for our sin upon himself.  He was raised from the dead proving that he could deliver on who he said he was and bring home the promise of eternal life.  He gave up everything he had before Bethlehem and gave everything he had on earth so that we could have everything out of our reach from God (forgiveness, a relationship, the hope of eternal life).  God is inviting all of us to recognize our sin, to repent and acknowledge his love for us in Christ and devote our lives to following hard after the lifestyle of Jesus, that great shepherd of God’s sheep.  

God has called me to shepherd his flock as an under-shepherd.  So for the few days that I have to live on earth before I die, God has given me the privilege to serve his people-a task I was unwittingly trained in while serving my Uncle at Wilt Dairy.  

“Father, thank you for filling my life with purpose and meaning through the vocation that you have called me to.  Thank you for being so way ahead in preparing me for what was coming.  Make me to be faithful to you and to please you in my duties of caring for your flock.  Bring new birth to the flock.  We’ll all live somewhere forever.  Allow me to know of your sanction that would enable the call of God to ring with such clarity that many would hear of Jesus and come to repent of their sin and relate to him and know of the joy of hope and peace with God.  Forsake not the work of my own hands.  Your grateful son,  Eric”

“The Lord is my shepherd.  I shall not want.”   Psalm 23:1