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Good evening, little lambs. Tonight's story is called The Lamb Who Carried Everything, inspired by the Gospel of Luke six twenty twenty six. Which lamb do you think came down the hill happiest, the one carrying everything he owned or the one carrying nothing at all? In tonight's reading from the Gospel of Luke twenty through twenty six, Jesus says something that sounds upside down. The ones who have very little are the blessed ones, he says, because God's kingdom is already theirs, and he gently warns the ones whose arms are full, because you can get so full that you stop noticing anybody else. So tonight we are on Shepherd's Hill on moving day with Cedar, who had more to carry than anybody. Moving day came the morning after the first frost. The high meadow had gone crisp and silver overnight, so the grass crunched under every hoof, and each lamb's breath hung in the cold air a moment before it went. Down in the low valley where the wind could never find them, the winter fold waited with its deep straw and its broken gate. Old Wooly stood at the foot of the loft ladder, biting off a length of cord for each lamb as they came by. He gave the rule slowly the way somebody does who has said a thing for forty years and still means every word. One bundle each, whatever you can carry on your own back and no more. Everything else waits up here until spring. Cedar had been getting ready for three evenings. He had laid every single thing he owned out in rows on the grass, and tilted his head sideways at the rows the way he does when he is measuring something. A measuring cord knotted at every hoof length, four flat slate wedges, a dented tin cup, eleven hazelrods tied in a sheaf, and one small grey wool cap. The cap had belonged to a lamb called Moss, Cedar's friend long before he came to Shepherd's Hill, a grey lamb who used to run along the very top of the ridge at sunset. Moss does not run there anymore. Cedar has kept the cap since the winter he stopped. Cedar looked at all of it and thought If I have every bit of it with me, then nothing else can go missing. He did not say that part out loud. He was not sure he would have liked the sound of it. Mallow came up the path with nothing at all. She is the thin lamb who walked over from the next valley in the summer where the grass had gone brown, and she arrived with nothing that day too. Old Woolly cut her a cord anyway, and she laughed and tucked it behind her ear next to the burdock burr that lives there, because she had nothing whatever to tie. Cedar saw that and thought privately and kindly and completely wrongly, poor mallow, the poorest lamb on the hill. They went down at mid morning. With the sheaf and the wedges and the rods roped across his shoulders, Cedar could not lift his head higher than his own knees, so what he saw of that whole shining morning was hooves, hooves and frost and dust and more hooves. Everybody else saw fox tracks in the white grass, and the geese going over in a long, ragged line, calling all the way down the valley. Cedar heard the geese. Halfway along, Wren, the littlest lamb in the flock, not much good at long walks yet, sat down in the track and would not go another step. So they took turns, clover first, and then biscuit, letting Wren lean along their sides. Cedar, called Clover, can you take her a while? Cedar stopped. He tried to work out how. There was no part of him left over. I can't, he said. I'm full. And Mallow, who had nothing at all, carried Wren asleep across her shoulders for the whole last rise. At the top of that rise the ground drops away, and the winter valley comes up at you in one go. Jesus was waiting there. He put the lambs in a row along the edge, the way you do when you want everybody to see the same thing at once, and told them to look. Then he said their names, one at a time, with a good long look at each lamb. Cedar came over the rise a good while afterwards. The row had broken up, and the lambs were already trotting down towards the barn. Nobody had been unkind to him. Nobody had left him out. He had simply not been there for it. In the yard the lambs untied their cords. Cedars took a long time and came apart in pieces all over the cold cobbles. Jesus sat down on the stones beside him. Cedar, he said, Mallow came down this hill with nothing tied on her back, and she got the whole morning. The geese, the frost, the top of the rise, ran asleep on her shoulders, her name said. You can hold a lot of things, said Jesus, or you can keep your hooves free. You cannot do both. Then he said it plainer still. The lambs with the least are not the poor ones. Belonging to God is the thing worth having, and it does not go in a bundle. Nobody carries it, it is given. Mallow has the whole of it, and she came over that ridge with nothing but dust in her wool, and what she is short of now, she will not be short of forever. God does not forget a hungry lamb. There is laughing coming. But somebody has to bring things, said Biskot. She was not being rude. She was saying the first true thing that arrived in her head. If everyone came down with nothing, we'd have no cup and no cord, and that gate is broken, and Cedar is the one who brought the cord. Aren't you glad he brought it? Jesus did not answer her. He looked at Cedar and waited. Cedar tilted his head sideways at his own things on the cobbles, and held his breath a long while before he let it go. Nobody asked me for the cord, he said. All morning, not once. That's because you were right at the back, said Biskit. No, said Cedar. It's because they couldn't see it. I tied it in the middle, right in the middle underneath everything where it was safest. He looked up. I didn't bring it to use, Biskit. I brought it so I would have it. Bring the cord, Jesus said to Biskit. Bring the cup and the wedges as well. Bring them where a hoof can reach them. So the cord went on the peg by the barn door where anybody could take it without asking. The wedges went under the broken gate that evening, and it shut properly for the first time since spring, and Mallow got a stall out of the wind. She laughed her small, dusty laugh, and the bird dropped onto the straw the way it does when she is glad. The gray cap Cedar kept. He never thought about giving it up, and Jesus never once asked him for it. Some things you carry because you love them, and that is a different thing altogether. Later, when the barn had gone quiet and warm, Cedar walked back up to the top of the last rise with nothing on his back. It took him hardly any time. He had forgotten how fast he could go. Jesus was still up there in the cold grass and moved over to make room. They looked at the valley together for a long while, with the light turning orange along the ridge and the barn roof going pink far below them, and the first star coming out over the shoulder of the hill where a gray lamb used to run. Cedar, said Jesus, that was all, just his name, in the very place where he had missed it. So this is the part to take to bed with you, little one. The ones with the least are the blessed ones, because what God gives you is not a thing you can carry. It is given, it is already yours, and your hooves stay free. If your arms feel full tonight, that is all right. Just put your things where another hoof can reach them, and keep yourself free for whoever needs leaning on tomorrow. Younger version available, older version available. Dear Jesus, thank you that being yours is already mine, and that nobody has to carry it. Help me hold my things loosely and keep my hooves free, so that when somebody needs me tomorrow, I am not too full to come. Good night, good shepherd. Amen. Good night, little lamb. God loves you so much. Sweet dreams.