SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good evening, little lambs. Tonight's story is called Say the Names Out Loud, inspired by the Gospel of Luke six eleven. Ask Pip to say something out loud in front of everybody, and she will tell you honestly that her voice does not work. She is not being modest, she has tried it, and nothing came out. But Jesus does not wait until we are ready before he asks us to do a hard thing. He asks first, and the strength comes while we are already doing it. That is what he shows us in the Gospel of Luke, chapter six, verses six through eleven. And so tonight we are down at the gate on Shepherd's Hill at the hour when the sun goes the color of an old penny, and every lamb in the fold has to be counted in. The counting stick lay in the crook of the gatepost all day long, and nobody touched it until the light began to go. The gatepost was an old oak trunk as fat around as a water barrel, and a small lamb could stand behind it and not be seen at all. Remember that because it matters in a minute. The stick itself was hazel, about as long as old Wooly's foreleg, rubbed shiny in the middle where hooves had gripped it for years, and along one edge ran forty one notches, one for every lamb. The last notch was pale and raw next to all the old gray ones, because it had only been cut a week ago, for Mallow, the thin lamb who walked over from the next valley where the grass had gone brown. Here is what the stick was for. When the sun went down, fog came up off the lower meadow, thick and white and cold, the way a cloud looks when it comes down out of the sky and sits in the grass, until it stood as high as a lamb's shoulders. Down inside the fog you could not see the gate or the hill, or even your own front hooves, you could only hear. So every evening somebody climbed onto the flat stone by the gate, up where the last of the light still was, and called the names out one at a time all the way down the stick, and one at a time the lambs came up out of the fog toward the sound of their own name. Usually it was biscuit. Biscuit's voice carried all the way to the far hedge and came back again. But tonight Jesus was leaning on the gate, and when Biskit trotted up with her tuft standing straight off her head, he lifted the stick and held it out past her to the smallest lamb there. Pip is gray and soft, and barely bigger than a loaf of bread, and her eyes are enormous and dark. She had counted those notches once, secretly, with her nose, on an afternoon when nobody was at the gate. She knew all forty one names by heart. She had practiced them lying down in the grass, where she was certain no one could possibly hear. Bramble had heard her. Bramble had told everybody. So not one lamb at that gate doubted that Pip knew the names. Knowing them had never been the hard part. My voice doesn't work, Pip said. It came out very small. Not out loud, not in front of everyone. I've tried. I know you have, said Jesus. He crouched right down until his eyes were level with hers, and he did not look away, not even when the others crowded in. Then he lifted her onto the flat stone by the gate, into the last of the light, where every single lamb could see her. Biscuit said the thing all of them were thinking. She could stand behind the gatepost, though, couldn't she? She knows every name. She could call them out from back there where nobody can see her at all, and everyone would still come up. Why does she have to be up on the stone with all of us looking at her? Matt was standing where he usually stands, one step outside of things. He spoke without moving. When you're the one still out in the fog, he said, you don't only want to hear your name. You want to see who's saying it. You want to know where they're standing. Nobody spoke for a moment. Away down in the meadow, something small moved in the fog and stopped and waited. And Pip needs it too, said Jesus. If she calls from behind the post, she will always think it was the post that did it. Biskit looked at the stick in Pip's hooves a little longer than she meant to. Then she thought about last night, how she had tied the swing rope up high and swung all afternoon without once looking down to see that Rin could not reach it any more, and how she had climbed the oak in the dark to undo her own knot. She stopped wanting the stick. Go on, Pip, she said, and she said it loudly. Pip opened her mouth. Nothing came out at all. She tried again. Bramble it was the size of a mouse. Again, said Jesus. Louder. Bramble Out of the fog came a blur of small fast legs, and Bramble arrived at the gate with her wool wet through, and her eyes shining. After that the names came easier Fig, Marigold, Mallow. Pip's voice wobbled, then steadied, then went further than it had ever gone in her life. She called Nettle, and nothing happened, so she called it again and waited and called it a third time. And Nettle came up slowly out of the fog with her floppy ear pressed flat, and dew all over her back, walking straight toward the sound. Jesus put it in words small enough for the smallest lamb there to carry home. You did not get your voice, and then call. You called, and the voice came. Old Wooly came up the stones last, taking his time the way he does now. He looked at the stick a long while before he spoke, and his voice was low and unhurried, the sound of a kettle just before it sings. Forty one names, he said. I have called every one of them at some time or other. Not one single evening did my voice feel ready first. Jesus set the stick back in the crook of the gatepost, where it lives. Tomorrow, he said to Pip, you called them again. So this is the part to take to bed with you, little one. There are things you are sure you cannot do, and you may be right right up until the moment you begin them. Jesus does not stand back and wait for you to be strong enough to be asked. He asks and the strength comes on the way, and he asks you out where people can see you, because somebody down in the dark is listening for where you are standing. Jesus, there is something I am sure I cannot do. Ask me anyway. I will start and you will bring the rest. Keep everyone safe who is still out in the dark tonight. Amen. Good night, little lamb. God loves you so much. Sweet dreams and