By BILL MILBY

As I write it is Monday morning after the blessed Easter (I prefer to call it Resurrection) weekend. It was unique in several ways for us.
I know that with that in mind some of you are thinking I made a “Typo” In the title of the column and it should have been “Slain”, not “Shorn”, but if you’ll stay with me a few minutes I’ll explain why I meant shorn.
Yes, it is a miracle of God’s grace that we celebrate each year at this time the Resurrection of Christ after his crucifixion…..The Lamb that was slain (Revelation 3:12) for our sin.
It was with those thoughts as an overall backdrop and motivation that we set out on an exploratory mission to Florida over the Resurrection weekend to checkout some sheep that we are considering adding to our farm. But these aren’t just any old sheep; they are Jacob’s sheep. They are the spotted sheep Jacob, whose name God later changed to Israel, bred and raised and later inherited from his father-in-law, Laban (Ref. Genesis 30:25-43) millennia ago before there ever was a nation Israel. In fact, these would have been the ancestral relatives to the sheep that Jacob took with him and his eleven sons and their families to Egypt to escape the ravages of famine with the help of his twelfth son, Joseph.
So, the ancestral roots of these sheep are indeed fascinating as was our visit with the modern day shepherd who is raising them in Florida. It turns out that there is a very dedicated association of Jacob’s sheep breeders throughout North America that is committed to reestablishing this ancient breed of spotted sheep.
In fact, if you’re interested in more information on this, I’d encourage you to go to www.breakingisraelnews.com  where you can read a fascinating story of a couple in British Columbia, Canada, who has a flock of about 130 Jacob’s sheep that they are preparing to export to Israel (after a mountain of bureaucratic red tape) on a specially outfitted Boeing airliner to re-establish the breed in a nature park in the Golan Heights region of Israel. If you know your mideast geography you know that this is right on the border with Syria where a civil war has been raging for the last several years. I’d say they were truly an adventurous and fearless couple wouldn’t you?
Anyway, back to the sheep that was shorn. During our visit with the Florida shepherd, she showed us some of the woolen coats that she just had shorn from her flock. Beautiful thick black and white woolen coats that the sheep were glad to shed for the upcoming summer and that some industrious modern day spinners will convert to expensive artisan sweaters to keep their customers warm in the winter.
What a neat tradeoff!
As we were handling the woolen coats, I was amazed at how much lanolin rubbed off on our hands. And if you’re a senior like me, you’ll remember that back in  the 50’s and early 60’s some enterprising marketers made a fortune in promoting all kinds of lotion and creams “Made with lanolin”.
If you want to see pictures of these unique spotted sheep, go to www.facebook.com/VisitingAngelsMacon where they’ll be posted up with a copy of this column.
I hope you had a blessed Resurrection weekend and thanks for reading
All About Seniors…..see you next week!
Bill Milby, CSA, is a Certified Senior Advisor and a Director of Visiting Angels® of Macon, a non-medical, living assistance service for seniors. If you have questions or
comments about this column you can reach him at william.mercylink@gmail.com or search for us at www.facebook.com/VisitingAngelsMacon.