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Good evening, little lambs. Tonight's story is called No Score at the Gate, inspired by the Gospel of Luke ten seventeen twenty four. Have you ever done something so wonderful that you could hardly wait to tell someone about it? Tonight, Jesus' friends come running home, bursting with exciting news about something brave they did that very day. Jesus is glad with them, truly glad, but he wants to show them something even better to be glad about, something that was true long before they ever did anything brave at all. So tonight we're back on Shepherd's Hill, where biscuit, clover, mat, and juniper are about to find out what that something is. The fog came up from the lower meadow, the way it always did on the cooler evenings, rolling slow and gray over the thornbreak, until the whole hillside smelled like wet grass and distant rain. Old Woolly stood at the fold gate, counting heads the way he did every evening, moving his lips silently as each lamb passed through. He counted twice, then a third time. Juniper's not back, he said. Juniper always wove the nicest flower crown for the evening fire circle, and tonight she had stayed down by the thornbreak long after the others, hunting for one last perfect blossom to finish it properly. She hadn't noticed the fog thickening or the light going soft and grey, until she looked up and couldn't see the hill at all. Jesus asked Biskot, Clover, and Matt to go find her before full dark. They split up at the stream. Biscuit took the high path because Biskit always took the high path. She loved a good leap, and there was a gap in the rocks there just wide enough to be worth bragging about. She cleared it in one bound, landed running, and called Juniper's name at the top of her voice the whole way through the bramble. Clover went along the low path, calling more softly, checking behind every tangle of gorse. Matt, who usually walked a little apart from everyone anyway, went the quiet way along the fence line, watching the ground for small hoof prints, the way he always watched things other lambs walked right past. It was Matt who found her. Juniper was wedged half into a gorse bush, her basket tipped over, blossoms scattered across the wet ground, crying a little, not because she was hurt, but because the crown was ruined and she was lost, and both things had happened at once. Matt didn't say anything clever. He just sat down next to her in the dark, picked up two flowers that weren't too crushed, and said it was going to be alright. Then he walked beside her the whole way home, slow, because her basket was heavy and her legs were tired, matching her pace step for step. By the time they reached the gate, Biskit had already told the story twice. She'd jumped the widest gap of her whole life. She'd called louder than anyone. She'd practically led the entire rescue, she said, and the lambs gathered around the fire circle were laughing and cheering and asking her to tell it again. Jesus was there at the gate, as he always was when the flock came home, and he laughed with real delight at Biskit's story, clapping his hands together once. That was wonderful, he told her, and he meant it. Then, as each lamb passed through the gate, he did exactly what he did every single evening. He rested his hand on their head and said their name the same warm way he always said it. Biscuit? Clover? Matt. Juniper. Nothing more, no extra cheer, no special word for the ones who'd had the big adventure. Biscuit stopped midstep. Wait, that's it? she said. I jumped the widest gap on the whole hill today. Doesn't that count for something more than just my name? Jesus didn't answer her right away. Instead, he turned to Matt. What did you do out there tonight? Matt shrugged, a little embarrassed, used to not having much to say when it was his turn. I didn't jump anything, he said. I just found Juniper and sat with her, and then we walked back slow because she felt bad about the flowers. That's not as big as jumping the gap, though, Biskit said. She wasn't being unkind. She was just saying the true thing a lamb would actually think. Jesus turned to Juniper instead of answering that either. Juniper, he said, was your name said any smaller just now than Biskit's was? Juniper thought about it, really thought, the way she thought about everything. No, she said slowly. It was exactly the same, same hand, same voice. And then quieter, mostly to herself. It would have been the same even if Matt hadn't found me at all. Matt had spent the whole walk home believing that what he'd done was the smallest, quietest thing anyone had done that evening. Now he wasn't sure smallest and biggest meant what he'd always thought they meant. Jesus knelt down low, so he was eye to eye with all four of them. Being glad about today is good, he said. I'm glad with you. But here's the best part, the part that never changes. I already knew your names before any of you left this hill this morning. Nothing you did out there made me know you more. Nothing would have made me know you less. No one said anything for a moment. Then Biskot, still turning it over, said So the jump wasn't the best part of today? The jump was a good part of today, Jesus said, but it isn't the part to build your gladness on. Build it on this instead. You belong to me, and that was true this morning before the fog ever came, and it'll be true tomorrow, whether you do something big or something small, or nothing at all. Matt looked down at the two crushed flowers he was still holding. He set them gently back in Juniper's basket, and so tonight we learn that the best thing to be glad about isn't how big or how small what we did was today. It's that God already knows us, already loves us, and that doesn't go up when we do something brave or down when we don't. It was true this morning, it'll be true tomorrow. That part never moves. Before you fall asleep tonight, you might wonder what's the bravest thing I did today, and what's the quietest? Jesus was glad about both, for exactly the same reason. Dear Jesus, thank you for knowing my name before I do anything at all. Help me be glad for the big things and the quiet things the same way you are. Keep me close to you tonight, and let me wake up still yours. Amen. Good night, little lamb. God loves you so much. Sweet dreams.