The Lost Sheep - Paperback

Lost Lamb — A Sheep’s Adventure and the Shepherd’s Rescue

Every child knows what it feels like to wander.

To drift a little further than they should. To follow curiosity into unfamiliar territory. To look up and suddenly realise that the safe, familiar place they started from is no longer where they are — and that they are not entirely sure how to get back.

The little sheep in this beautifully told story knows that feeling too.

He escapes from the flock one day — not with bad intentions, just with the irresistible pull of new places to explore and new adventures to find. But the world beyond the flock is bigger and stranger and less friendly than it looked from a distance. And when the adventure stops being fun and the lamb realises he is truly, helplessly lost — there is nothing he can do but wait and hope.

And then the shepherd comes.

Lost Lamb: A Sheep’s Adventure and the Shepherd’s Rescue is a beautifully crafted retelling of one of Jesus’ most beloved parables — the story of the lost sheep — written for young children in the warm, accessible, rhythmically rich form that makes it both a perfect bedtime read and a genuinely meaningful first encounter with a story whose depths no reader ever fully exhausts.

The Story Behind the Story

When Jesus told the parable of the lost sheep, he was not simply telling a charming story about a shepherd and his flock. He was making a declaration about the character of God — about the kind of God he is, the kind of love he has for his people, and the extraordinary lengths he is willing to go to in order to bring home the ones who have wandered away from him.

The shepherd in the parable does not write off the lost sheep as an acceptable loss. He does not calculate that ninety-nine out of a hundred is a perfectly satisfactory result and that the cost of searching for one more is not worth it. He leaves the ninety-nine and goes after the one — through the wilderness, through the darkness, through whatever difficulty and danger the search requires — until he finds it. And when he finds it, he does not bring it home with frustration or disappointment. He lifts it onto his shoulders with joy and carries it home, and then calls his friends and neighbours together to celebrate because the sheep that was lost has been found.

That is the God that Jesus is describing — a God whose love for each individual member of his flock is so personal, so persistent, and so willing to pay any cost that he will leave everything to search for the one who has wandered away. Not because the wandering sheep deserved to be searched for. But because the shepherd’s love is that kind of love.

Lost Lamb helps young children begin to feel the warmth and wonder of that truth — through a story that is exciting enough to hold their attention at bedtime and deep enough to stay with them long after the lights go out.

Perfect for Bedtime Reading

There is something particularly fitting about the lost sheep as a bedtime story.

Bedtime is the moment when the busyness of the day gives way to quietness — when children, settling down to sleep, are often most open to the kind of gentle, reassuring truth that reaches past the active mind to the resting heart. The image of the shepherd searching for the lost lamb, finding him, lifting him gently onto his shoulders, and carrying him safely home is one of the most comforting images in all of Scripture — and one that speaks with particular power to children in those quiet moments before sleep.

Children who fall asleep with that image in their minds — the shepherd who searches whatever the cost, who finds the lost one and carries them home — are children who are being given, in the most natural and gentle way imaginable, a picture of the God who loves them that will shape their sense of his character for years to come.

Lost Lamb is crafted with exactly that purpose in mind — a story that is warm enough to settle a child for sleep, beautiful enough to be a genuine pleasure to read aloud, and true enough to do lasting work in a young heart.

What This Book Will Help Your Child Do

• Encounter the parable of the lost sheep in a form that is accessible, warm, and genuinely engaging for young children
• Begin to understand the character of the Good Shepherd — the God who searches for the lost whatever the cost and who brings them home with joy
• Find personal comfort and reassurance in the truth that the shepherd’s love for every individual member of his flock is personal, persistent, and will never give up
• Develop a love for the stories Jesus told — the parables that open up the kingdom of God in ways that are imaginatively rich and genuinely inexhaustible
• Build the kind of warm, emotionally resonant memory of a biblical story that bedtime reading uniquely provides — carrying the truth of the parable in a form that is associated with comfort, safety, and love
• Develop an early, instinctive sense of who God is — not a distant or indifferent deity but a shepherd who cares for each one personally and who will search until he finds the lost

Who Should Use This Book?

Lost Lamb is ideal for:

• Parents of young children wanting a beautiful, gospel-centred bedtime story that introduces the parable of the lost sheep in a warm, accessible, and genuinely comforting way
• Families wanting a high-quality read-aloud storybook that makes story time both enjoyable and spiritually meaningful — combining the pleasure of a beautifully told story with the depth of a genuine encounter with the teaching of Jesus
• Grandparents looking for a meaningful, gentle, and gospel-rich gift for young grandchildren — particularly one that can become part of a regular bedtime routine
• Sunday school teachers and children’s ministry workers wanting a storybook resource for teaching the parable of the lost sheep to young children in an engaging and age-appropriate way
• Home-educating families wanting to incorporate the parables of Jesus into their curriculum through beautifully crafted children’s literature
• Churches wanting to resource families with warm, accessible, spiritually rich children’s storybooks that root young children in the teaching of Jesus from the earliest years
• Any family in India wanting to give their young children a beautiful introduction to one of Jesus’ most beloved and most personally reassuring stories — the story of a shepherd whose love for the lost never gives up

The Shepherd Who Never Stops Searching

Jesus said that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance. He said that the shepherd goes after the lost one until he finds it. He said that when it is found, there is rejoicing — genuine, celebratory, friends-and-neighbours-gathered-together rejoicing — over the one who was lost and is found.

That is the God of the Bible. Not a God who keeps score and writes off those who wander. Not a God who waits at a distance for the lost to find their own way home. But a shepherd — the Good Shepherd — who goes after the lost one whatever the cost, who finds them in the wilderness, who lifts them onto his shoulders with joy, and who carries them safely all the way home.

Lost Lamb gives young children their first beautiful, bedtime-warm, genuinely personal encounter with that shepherd — and with the extraordinary love that will not rest until every lost lamb is found.