On December 28th 1908 Postman Robert Cunningham set off from Ballantrae in blizzard conditions to deliver the mail to the surrounding hamlets and farmhouses. On his way home, he took a detour over the moor as snow had blocked the usual road. He never made it back, and his body was found two days later, lying on his empty mail sack and covered by the snow. He was 27. The following year, a cross was erected in his memory.
It reminds me of the story of another young man lost in the snow. The parents of a boy in the Highlands died when he was very young and, as he had no one to care for him, he went to live with his grandfather, who was a shepherd. His grandfather told him many of the stories in the Bible, especially stories about shepherds. He told him about how Moses and David had been shepherds, and how Jesus is described in the Bible as ‘the Good Shepherd’ who laid down his life for the sheep.
The boy had never learned to read, so his grandfather taught him a simple way to remember the first five words of Psalm 23 – ‘The Lord is my shepherd’. He took the boy's left hand, and as he said each word he would point to a finger. Soon the boy could say the words himself, holding each finger as he did so. The grandfather noticed that the boy seemed to take special pleasure in the fourth word, ‘my’, and held his fourth finger tightly.
As the boy grew older, he was able to take the sheep out by himself to find pasture. Late one afternoon, however, the old man became worried. The weather was bitterly cold and it had been snowing for some time.
The snowstorm turned into a blizzard and the old man put on his coat and hat and raced out of the house in search of the boy. However, the fierce winds and blinding snow made it impossible. He would soon lose all sense of direction, and his old and weary body was unable to go further.
With a heavy heart he returned to his little cottage and slumped down on the chair in front of the fire. Nothing could be done until the blizzard stopped. He prayed that God would watch over the boy. He thought of the things he had tried to teach him, and hoped that he would not forget them. A long and restless night lay ahead.
By morning, the snow had stopped, so the old man wasted no time. He went to where he thought the lad might be sheltering. Suddenly, in the distance, he saw a mound in the snow. His heart sank as he raced towards it. Desperately he pushed the snow away and there he saw the little shepherd lad frozen to death. The old man wept sadly as he looked at the little body.
As he continued to brush the snow away, he noticed that the boy’s hands were clasped in a strange way. His right hand was firmly gripping the fourth finger of the left hand. The old man remembered how he had taught him to say: ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’ by holding a finger for each word. There was no doubt that the finger the lad was holding stood for the word ‘my’.
The old grandfather lifted up his eyes and thanked God that the little shepherd boy had known that the ‘Good Shepherd’ was his Shepherd.
Psalm 23 is still a much-loved psalm today, and often sung at funerals. But the story of the shepherd boy makes me wonder – how many people can truly say that the Lord is ‘my’ Shepherd?
Sadly I suspect that at many funerals, those words are not true of the deceased or many of those present – perhaps not even of the minister.
But ultimately, in the face of death, having the Lord as our shepherd is the only thing that matters. The Bible teaches, in another famous chapter, that ‘All we like sheep have gone astray’. It goes on to say that ‘we have turned – every one – to our own way’. And yet the tremendous good news, prophesied 700 years before the cross, is that ‘the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all’ (Isaiah 53:6).
And so if Jesus is our Shepherd, he will guide us safely home, to heaven itself. The shepherd boy didn’t have much – but he had the one thing that really mattered.
Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 12th June 2025
