MISS GAD-ABOUT
Years ago a man named Phillip Keller went from being a shepherd to a pastor, in his book on the 23rd Psalm he talks about one particular sheep that he had. Phillip took great pride in maintaining his fields, they were far greener than that of his neighbor, much better then the barren rocky ground on the other side of his fence, which lead to the sea. In fact he had perhaps the best fields around, all maintained to care for his sheep. As a result the sheep in his flock were plump and healthy.
But he had one particular ewe who didn’t know how to be content. She was a great sheep, strong and healthy with a good coat of wool, she produced strong healthy lambs, he loved this sheep, but she had one problem, she always wanted something else. She was always trying to find a low spot in the fence to jump over, or a hole in the fence to escape through. It didn’t matter if the place that she was going looked a lot worse then the place she was, she just always wanted to be someplace else. Because of this he named her “Miss Gad-about”.
She was more trouble then the rest of the flock combined but he kept her. Until he began to notice that her behavior was affecting the rest of the flock. She began to show other sheep how to jump over the fence. She began to take them down to the sea shore, where all sorts of dangers waited. She also began to do this with her lambs training them that this was the proper behavior. At that point Phillip, the shepherd, had no other choice, because she would not change her behavior, because she would not be content with what he provided as a shepherd, he brought the sheep in and that was the end of “Miss Gad-about”