Living God’s Story, Re-telling His Stories
The author of A Sheepy Adventure, a picture story book for kids, shares about how God the good Shepherd drew her back to Him when she was lost in doubt.
Louise Lee hopes that A Sheepy Adventure: Learning from Psalm 23 will help young ones understand what it means to say “The Lord is my shepherd”.
For many Christians, Psalm 23’s “The Lord is my shepherd” is one of the most comforting phrases they can find in the Bible.
For writer Louise Lee, this truth holds a special place in her heart. In her own life, she has experienced how the Good Shepherd is always ready to draw back His lost and straying sheep into His loving arms.
Her own story of faith is one of personal tragedy, doubt, and discovery.
“I lost my mum to a fatal accident when I was 10,” she says. This caused her to turn inward, and Louise began to ask questions about death and the purpose of life at a young age.
When she turned 12, she came to a saving knowledge of Christ through a school teacher. However, she did not continue in her Christian walk in her secondary school years. Instead, she began to look to academic achievements as a source of purpose in life.
“I gradually lost sight of God, became very self-centred, and lived an empty life without purpose,” she recalls.
But then she did badly in her studies, and this became a wake-up call for her to return to God. Rededicating her life to Him, she began to seek to follow in His ways again, determined to become a faithful disciple of Christ.
Reflecting on what God has done in her life, she saw Psalm 23 come real in her life. She experienced personally what the Psalmist meant when he wrote:
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
(Psalm 23:2-3 ESV)
Living God’s story in Her Life
Life has not been the same since she returned to God, says Louise. Spending time with Him every day with the help of Our Daily Bread, she has discovered the Shepherd revealing to her how He is writing His story in her life.
“Using Our Daily Bread as a devotional has helped me to grow as a disciple of Christ, as I develop a habit of coming before God daily in prayer and hearing Him speak,” she adds. “God has transformed me in many ways and has given me a much fuller life than I used to have.”
One significant part of the story God is writing in her life is, interestingly, to do with stories.
When she was young, one of Louise’s aspirations was to be a writer. When she was older, she worked towards that goal by attending Christian writing courses.
“Even though I had a different career path, writing with a biblical perspective had always been very much ingrained in me, and I have since been writing articles and stories for various online platforms,” she says.
Over time, she also developed a keen interest in writing for children, especially in rewriting Bible stories.
This was where her path crossed once again with that of Our Daily Bread Ministries Singapore office. In 2019, the ministry invited Louise to turn a story she had written into a picture story book.
A Sheepy Adventure: How It Came About
A Sheepy Adventure: Learning from Psalm 23
A Sheepy Adventure: Learning from Psalm 23 is in fact one of Louise’s works from a writing course that she completed some years back.
As she read Psalm 23, she felt led to go deeper into various real-life settings revolving around sheep and their shepherds. So she wrote a story that tried to explain Psalm 23 in a simple way, so that young children could understand. A Sheepy Adventure was the result of this effort.
Meant for readers between the ages of 4 and 7, the story invites children into an imaginary land to experience the loving care of a shepherd as they follow David the sheep through various dangers. The story includes key themes of friendship, gratitude, and restoration.
When Our Daily Bread Ministries Singapore approached her with the idea to publish the story with illustrations, Louise was delighted.
It was a great opportunity, she says, to help more children experience the comforting promise of Psalm 23 and understand—as she did many years ago—what “the Lord is my shepherd” in a personal way. Working with Nicholas, the illustrator, and seeing A Sheepy Adventure in print and being shared around the world through Our Daily Bread Ministries, she adds, thrills her.
“I’m thankful that I could now partner with them to publish a children’s picture book to help children discover Jesus as their great shepherd,” she says. “I was delighted to see how my text was combined with illustrations to give birth to a picture book in which the story came alive.”
