On Any Ordinary Day

Driving down a country highway, open fields stretched left and right as winter’s chill still clung to the air and frosted the earth. The irony of this bucolic scene masked the grim fate shadowing the animals grazing there. The odd piece of rubbish or remains of roadkill left roadside, offered its own reminder of human indifference.

Amongst it all, clinging to life itself, lay Hickory. Licked clean by his mumma, the only trace she had ever been, he seemed at first nothing more than a crumpled scrap of white paper. Then the realisation came: this was a life to be seen—and kindness did what kindness alone can do.

It stopped. And in that instant, Hickory’s life changed forever.

As word heralded his arrival, colostrum was prepared, iodine readied, umbilical clamp set, incubator switched on. It was all systems go. What we weren’t prepared for, though, was his sheer size. With most newborn lambs weighing around 4 kilos, with many surrendered ones even less, Hickory was a giant at 5.7 kilos.

Yet size, nature reminds us, does not always equal strength. Larger lambs can face increased complications during birth, sometimes suffering oxygen deprivation or breathing difficulties. And these little cherub-like wonders require more nutrition to fuel their growth.

The scales of life, it seemed, were tipped against him.

And yet, here he was, in all his glorious, woolly wonder.

So what began as an ordinary day for one passer-by became anything but for a lamb who had lost his way … and found a kinder one.

Hickory’s tale carries a quiet lesson for us all. That on any ordinary day, extraordinary moments may be waiting just around the corner. That the remarkable often arrives disguised as the unexpected—a phone call, a chance encounter, a voice on the radio, or even a newborn lamb lying by the side of the road.

Hickory could have so easily gone unseen, as indeed he had until that moment. Passed by, overlooked, dismissed, as lives rushed on in their usual haste. But in that single, serendipitous moment, someone stopped.

And everything changed.

For Hickory, it was the difference between certain death and a life of kindness. And for the rest of us, a reminder that even the smallest of lives can tug at the very fabric of our hearts and reweave the way we see the world.

Because on any ordinary day, the extraordinary is waiting.

The only question is: will we stop and truly see?