Grace to the weak kid, even at midnight

Over the past two days, we have had a veritible storm of kids born.  At one point yesterday, I was working with a couple of newborn kids, to get them up and onto their dams udder, and at the same time watching another doe going into labor a hundred feet away.  Most of them have done fine.

But one extra small doeling had gotten away from its mom at birth, wasn't under its heatlamp, and was chilled.  Not terribly, and a half hour with the blow dryer, and she was warm enough to wake up, and after a lot of prodding, even ate a bit.  I thought all was well, but then when I went out this morning, repeat performance:  the kid was in the middle of its stall, flat on the cold ground.  I grabbed it, and at first thought it was dead, it was stiff and cold. But I heard a faint flutter of life inside!  So hurried it into the house, put it in a sink of warm water, and massaged its tiny limbs and rubbed it all over.  Eventually, it came around, and after some time wrapped in a towel on a heat register, we took it back out to its dam.  She still claimed it, but the kid was pretty dumb... wouldn't latch onto the teat, and when it did, couldn't seem to figure out how to get the end of it flowing.  After a long time, we finally got some milk into her.

But late in the day, she was acting chilled again, sleepy and wouldn't stand to nurse.  So back into the house, on the heat register for a while to rewarm.  Then back to the barn, and another long struggle to get it to eat anything.  About this time, I milked the mom a bit, figuring we might have to bottle feed her.  Took her back into the house to the heat register and then Ivan took it into the bed with him because it still wasn't acting like it was warming up.  It did rewarm, and then another jaunt to the barn to its mom -- and she finally ate pretty well.  Now she's back inside, on a towel in the bathroom, on a heat register.

  Ivan with chilled doe

So much work for one little doeling!  A commercial operation would have lost her by now; we probably would have if the weather had been like last week's below zero slam.  And so much attention lavished on the one extra small kid out of the whole bunch born in the last couple of days.  Which seems to me to be the way God works:

26 Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. ²⁷But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; ²⁸God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are... (I Cor. 1:26-28)

If we can pour forth attention on the tiny, weak doeling that may well not survive the next day, how much more does God pour attention on us?  And if this is the way God works, then oughtn't we pay attention to those people around us who are weak, who are vulnerable, and who we might be able to help?