The past few weeks have been quite difficult for me, partly because of the intensity of the workload (final exams are approaching fast) and partly because of my worries about the future. I’m going to live with a close friend who has been ill for a long time and who needs a carer. At the moment I don’t have much idea about the type of job that I will be doing or whether I will take a postgraduate course. I don’t have much idea about anything any more. And being autistic, I find change and uncertainty extremely hard to cope with.
Today my friend told me the name of the place where we’re going to live. It’s called the Lamb’s Arms Building.
It may be named after the local watering-hole, but the pub was not the first thing to leap to mind when I heard that name. The Lamb of God is one of Jesus’ titles, as the sacrificial lamb is a symbol of peace and forgiveness throughout the Bible. The old symbolism was fulfilled in Jesus when he sacrificed himself to give that peace to us. Jesus makes so much use of this imagery in his own teachings that one of my non-Christian friends, after coming to a few church services with me and reading one of the Gospels, asked in confusion, “Why does God have such an obsession with sheep?”
“He must be sheepish!” I exclaimed gleefully. (It’s at times like this that the friends who have been trying to persuade me to join a church that allows female pastors ought to realise how very wrong they are. My puns and I are bad enough as it is - we’d be intolerable in a pulpit.)
My sophisticated taste in jokes aside, the focus of this blog entry is not the Lord’s fondness for bovine creatures, but his compassion for us. His gentle embrace.






