We Have a Shepherd Like No Other

We human beings are a curious lot, indeed. We are made of and for beauty, given the light of intellect with which to know the truth, and possessing the freedom of will to choose to live in goodness, inspired and driven by the great mystery of love…or not. Each of us is molded from earthly, finite stuff, enlivened at the very moment of our conception by the life-giving breath of our Creator that we might live, move and have our being in and through him all the days of our lives. We are made in and for love, and yet, we all too often find ourselves burdened by and living within the dark wastes of the terrible mystery of evil. Why?

We know the Edenic story, the unhappy and foolish fall from grace from the Book of Genesis. We know that it is more than a mere metaphor. It is our own story. We, too, turn away from God. We sin and get lost, certain in our foolish and prideful choices to go our ways. The image or metaphor of sheep needing to be shepherded is common throughout scripture. We are also spoken of often as the children of God, who have been given life, our being, indeed, everything through him, who yet rebel and wander away. In truth, the Bible is not about our quest for God, but about his passionate, unrelenting quest for us. He is our Good Shepherd, the One who, despite our constant rebellion, came into the world as one of us, to rescue us from ourselves, to shepherd us back into the heavenly flock.

Our shepherd is always at work on our behalf. He seeks us out when we are lost. He seeks us when we are caught up in the brambles of our sins, or when we have gone up to the barren wind-swept mountaintop wastes of our pride to worship other gods, or when we have fallen into the deep ravines of our passions, always ready and willing to forgive us and to carry us back to safety. He rescues us from all the dark places that we have scattered to in our foolishness. He wants to cast into the depths of the sea all of our sins and to bring us safely into the joy that he made us for from the beginning.

We see our Good Shepherd at work in many passages throughout the scriptures. For example, we see the image of lost sheep in the prophet Ezekiel 34: 11-14, or in Micah 7: 14-15, 18-20, or in the New Testament in the Parable of the Lost Sheep in Luke 15: 3-7, where the shepherd, seemingly against all common sense, leaves the 99 to go out in search of the one lost sheep; or in the Parable of the Good Shepherd, where we see, in Jesus, the Shepherd who is willing to lay down his life for his flock, Jn. 10: 1-18. Our Shepherd’s love is infinite, unconditional, unconquerable, and utterly relentless. When we are lost and cry out in our desperation; when we come to our senses and return to God, his forgiveness is instant. We see this most powerfully in The Parable of the Prodigal Son, Luke 15: 11-32, which may be the greatest short story ever told. It reveals everything we need to know about God’s unquenchable love and forgiveness toward us.

During this Lenten season let us pray: “Lord our God, we are the flock that you shepherd. Care for your lost, your injured, your frightened, and lead us all to safety, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”