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Good evening, little lambs. Tonight's story is called More Than One Nest Could Hold, inspired by the Gospel of Luke twelve thirteen twenty one. There is a kind of having that doesn't make you any warmer. Jesus once met a man whose fields had grown so much grain that he tore down his own barns just to build bigger ones. And while he was busy planning how to keep it all for himself, Jesus gently warned him that a full barn and a full heart are not the same thing at all. And so tonight, on Shepherd's Hill, where the first cold wind of autumn has just come whistling down off the ridge, we find out exactly how much bracken fern one small lamb can gather before she learns what Jesus already knew. The wind had arrived that afternoon without any warning at all, turning every lamb's breath to little clouds, and sending old woolly around the fold, saying the same thing to everyone. Line your hollows tonight. Winter doesn't knock first. Each lamb had a sleeping hollow scooped into the hillside, bowl shaped and just her size, and each evening before the cold set in, the whole flock gathered dried bracken fern and soft rushes to line them thick and warm. Clover's hollow was already heaped golden brown by supper time. Biscuits was done before anyone else had even started, because biscu did everything at a run. Fig found the best patch of bracken anyone had seen all autumn, tucked into the sunny side of Bramble Ridge, dry and gold and taller than her own knees. She had never once, in any winter she could remember, had quite enough bedding to keep the draught out, and something about seeing so much good bracken all in one place made a feeling rise up in her chest that she did not have a name for yet. So Fig gathered, she filled her hollow to the very brim, and then she kept going, trip after trip, dragging great armfuls back down the hill long after her hollow could hold one more stem. She stacked the extra in a loose golden heap just outside it, patting it down smooth, already imagining a whole winter where she never had to worry about running out again. She did not notice little Pip standing at the edge of the ridge watching the last of the good bracken disappear into Fig's enormous pile. Pip's own hollow, dug only that week, since she'd moved her sleeping spot nearer the fire, had nothing in it but a thin scatter of old dry grass. It was Jonah who noticed. Jona noticed things like that the way some lambs noticed rain coming before a single cloud showed up. Fig has three hollows worth stacked up out there, he said to Jesus that evening, and Pip hasn't got enough to keep the frost off her nose. Will you tell her to share? Jesus looked at the great gold heap and then at Jonah, and smiled the particular smile he kept for questions that weren't quite the right question yet. Jonah he said, who made me the one who divides up Bracken between you two? That isn't what's sitting heavy here tonight. He turned instead to Fig, who was still patting her pile smooth. Fig, how much does your hollow actually hold? Fig blinked. Enough for me, she said slowly. Just enough for me that's all it's ever held. And the rest of it? Jesus asked, nodding at the heap sitting loose in the open air beside it. Fig didn't answer right away. The wind was picking up now, tugging at the loose top of her pile, and for the first time all afternoon she looked at it properly, not as more, but as Bracken sitting outside any hollow at all, going nowhere, warming no one. That night the wind that had been building all evening finally came over the ridge in earnest, and by morning Fig's loose outside pile was scattered clear across the hillside, gone, every stem of it blown into the hedges and the stream and the fields beyond. Her hollow itself, the part she actually slept in, hadn't lost a single stem. She had been warm all night. It's not fair, Fig said when she saw it, and she meant it. I worked all afternoon for that. I found it first. Nobody argued with her. Jona just waited, steady as the ground he was named for, and slowly, turning it over, Fig worked out the rest of it herself. It was already more than my hollow could ever hold, she said. So it was never really mine to use. It was just sitting there. The wind didn't take anything I needed. It only took what I was never going to sleep in anyway. She found Pip at the edge of the ridge that morning, and they walked back up together, gathering a fresh armful for Pip's bare little hollow until it sat heaped soft and full. That night the two of them pushed their hollows side by side and slept pressed close together, and Fig discovered something the enormous lonely pile had never once given her. Two lambs tucked together were warmer than one lamb surrounded by more bracken than she could ever use. It isn't the size of the pile that keeps a lamb warm at night. It's having enough and a friend close by to share it with. God doesn't ask us how much we've gathered for ourselves. He asks whether our hearts are full of love for the ones beside us, and that is the only kind of rich that never blows away. Dear Jesus, thank you for all that you give me. Help me notice when someone near me has too little, and help me share freely instead of holding on tight. Keep my heart rich in love tonight and always. Amen. Good night, little lamb. God loves you so much. Sweet dreams.