The Rancher Who Drove Through the Storm

In February 2019, a polar vortex dropped temperatures across the Texas Panhandle to twenty below zero. Cattle rancher Jake Herrmann of Amarillo woke at 3 a.m. to winds howling at forty miles per hour. He knew his herd had scattered.

Most ranchers would have waited for daylight. Jake loaded his truck with hay bales, vaccine kits, and blankets, then drove into the whiteout. He found the first group huddled against a fence line six miles south, frost caking their faces. He broke open bales and scattered feed. Then he kept driving. Over the next fourteen hours, he tracked down every cluster of cattle across twenty-two thousand acres — the ones trapped in a ravine, the calves separated from their mothers, the old cow with a gash on her leg that he cleaned and wrapped right there in the snow.

His neighbor later asked why he didn't just wait and count the losses afterward. Jake said, "Because every one of them is mine, and I don't count losses. I count heads until the number is right."

That is the heart of Ezekiel 34. The Lord declares, "I Myself will search for My sheep and look after them." Where the hired shepherds of Israel abandoned the flock, the Almighty refused to write off a single one. He binds the injured. He strengthens the weak. He drives through the storm — not because the sheep earned it, but because they are His, and He does not count losses.