The Shepherd could not sleep for the ensuing months. All day and night he cried out to the Lord.

“Please return my son to me. Why did you take him away? Why not me instead”

This he did in the morning when he woke, the in evening when he returned from pasture, and at night when he could not sleep. Unwilling to part with his son, he wrapped his body in cloth and kept it in a stone coffin within his house.

On the third day of the third month, the Shepherd returned from pasture. the sheep that was once lost had grown into a strong Ram, large enough to carry the Shepherd as he had done before the Shepherd knelt before the coffin and prayed to the Lord.

“Lord Almighty please return my son to me.”

But this time he did not cry out in agony, instead, his mind was at peace, but still, he wept and said.

“Let me be at peace with these events and if you permit it, let my body be reunited with my son’s.”

A sudden rushing wind blew through the room.

“Father, why do you cry?”

The Shepherd opened his eyes. Standing before him was his son enshrined in radiant light. The Shepherd’s eyes lit up and he ran up to hug his son, but as he approached his body passed right through him. He soon realized that his son was a ghost and his body was still in the coffin.

He began to feel resentment and cried out. “Why Lord do you torment me with a vision of my son that I cannot keep or touch?”

But the son lay his hand on his father’s face. Although the Shepherd knew no physical body was there, he could feel the heat radiating from his son’s image.

“My soul is gone from his world Father. I have passed to the world above. But in your prayer and through your small, but everpresent faithfulness the Lord has granted you my body so that no sheep will ever be lost.”