This musing is adapted from a story we wrote for the 4:00 p.m. Christmas Eve service this year.

“While shepherds watch their flocks by night, I make my great escape.” Jazzy the lamb knew how to sing, but he didn’t tell anyone. He just sang to himself. He was there that night except for the part when he wasn’t.

Good Shep had just finished counting all the sheep when Jazzy managed to sneak away.

Sneaking, creeping, running away, free from the rest of that boring flock that just followed the staff or the dog and free from the watchful eyes of the shepherds. Jazzy slipped and stumbled over the ground. Then he tripped over himself on the rocky ground. When he regained his footing, he looked back and saw flashes of light. In fact, the dark cold place where his flock was resting seemed like it was glowing. Something was going on in the sky.

“Whatever. If I just keep walking, I’ll find better pastures sooner or later,” Jazzy rationalized to himself.

But the path ahead seemed to be getting darker and darker. And where he come from was looking more and more like day. It sounded crazy but—Ouch! Oh no.

Jazzy’s hoof was stuck. He couldn’t get it out from a rocky crag. And the thorns—they hurt.

His mind wandered a bit at first. Nowhere to go now, he thought. Whatever that light show was, well, he bet good old Good Shep was getting ready to head into town to see something new and probably exciting. But Jazzy knew Good Shep would do his counting to be sure he had all the sheep.

95, 96, 97, 98, 99—99—there should be one hundred. Jazzy could hear Shep saying it seriously to himself. No one else was so precise and careful about each sheep. The sheep talk, and word gets around. Jazzy heard stories. Some shepherds get sloppy when it comes to the flock. A missing sheep here or there—that’s just the cost of doing business. Not Good Shep. So what if the other shepherds didn’t care. They wanted to hightail it to Bethlehem to see whatever was coming next.

But Good Shep would have none of it. “Go on ahead,” he said to the other shepherds. And they did.

Jazzy started his bleating, baah-haaing cries. His hoof had started to throb and bleed. He raised the volume on his cries.

“I think I hear him…It’s Jazzy.” Good Shep was the only person who could tell. “I’d recognize that bleating anywhere.”

Jazzy was starting to panic. No matter which way he turned, he couldn’t get his hoof out from the rock. It was stuck good and tight. Everything Jazzy did made it worse. He had heard about animals less refined than he chewing their limb off to be free of a trap. That was so not Jazzy's style. But he couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if a wolf or a coyote passed by.

Then suddenly, the hands of a human freed him from the rocks and thorns and raised him up high. Jazzy shook a little and then saw who it was. Good Shep lifted him from the cold, hard, uncomfortable ground and gently put Jazzy over his shoulders.

“You’re quite the mess, little guy,” he said. “Let’s get you cleaned up, and we can catch up with the others on the way to Bethlehem.”

So, he cleaned Jazzy’s wool and bandaged his hoof.

Good Shep told Jazzy that running off meant he missed the angels singing and telling them about a new king coming. The shepherds were some of the first to know. Good news for people everywhere.

Good Shep and Jazzy caught up to the others just as they entered the stable.

And there in the feeding trough for the donkeys and cows was a baby, a human baby. A manger. In at least one human language, it means eat.

Jazzy didn’t really get it. After all, he was just animal, but then Good Shep said that this baby was going to save people all around the world. He was going to save people just like Good Shep who left the shepherds and the flock to find Jazzy and bring him back home.

Jazzy never was so happy as when he realized Good Shep was setting him free from his mess and carried him on his shoulders. If that was what this baby was going to do for people, well, that was some good news that’s really out of this world, yet somehow in it.

Merry Christmas shepherds. Merry Christmas lambs. Merry Christmas sun. Merry Christmas moon and stars. Merry Christmas everything and everyone everywhere.

Merry because—as Good Shep later told the flock—the baby in the manger would one day be a shepherd like him and a lamb like Jazzy, only perfect. On his shoulders, even and especially when comes the cross, he bears it all, he carries all. And he will tell the people to mangent—eat. And drink and be merry. Remember that I came to live, die, live that you might know, eat and drink and live in that glowing-in-the-dark kind of light where the angels say, “Do not be afraid. Be exceedingly glad.”

Now both shepherds and sheep lie down by still water and rest.