I've been thinking a lot about a sermon I heard recently.

Allow me to give you the paraphrased Reader's Digest version of what Christine Caine preached when retelling the parable of the Lost Sheep.

In the parable of the Lost Sheep, there are 100 sheep, one gets lost.
Chris Caine retells the story that the sheep are all going along their day, doing what sheep do and at the end of the day, one looks around and sees that the other 99 are gone. She finds herself all alone. And the sheep thinks to herself “How did this happen?”
She didn't mean to get lost. She just stuck her head down that morning, started munching on the grass and the somehow through the course of the day, the others made it back safely back home and she didn't.

Obviously when I heard the paraphrase of this parable, it was a sermon about redemption.
But my heart heard something else. How many of us are just going along day by day.
Same routine day in and day out. Get up, get the kids off to school, go to work, come home, make dinner, do laundry or other chores, help the kiddos with their homework and then hopefully relax for a few minutes in front of the TV before we go to bed and start the same routine all over again tomorrow.

I've recently raised my head and started looking around.
I've begun thinking to myself, “Where am I? How did I get here? How did I get so out of shape and overweight? Who is this person I see in the mirror and what happened to that fit 25 year old?”

I'm not sure I like all the answers, but I know it is time to get my head up and be aware of my surrounding. It's time to make conscience decisions about how I take care of myself.

It's my prayer you are already part of the 99 and that you are doing all you can to take care of yourself. If you still wandering around the pasture with your head down, then take this piece of advice from one lost sheep to another; now is your time and today is your day to start taking care of you.

KAS