Shepherd

 April 30, 2024

This week’s verse is from Psalm 23:1 “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.” 

“The Lord is my SHEPHERD.” We don’t have much experience with shepherds, so it’s easy to miss many of the implications of the word, but think about this: If the Lord is my shepherd, that means I am one of the sheep. Have you noticed that sports teams don’t choose a sheep for a mascot? That’s because sheep are…well…sheep. Pretty dumb and defenseless. When it comes to life, that would describe most of us. We make dumb decisions and left to ourselves, are pretty defenseless against the devil’s trickery. We need the Good Shepherd if we don’t want life to gobble us up.

But for it all to work properly, we must be willing to follow the Shepherd. As Jesus said, “My sheep know my voice and follow me.” If we’re honest, we’ll admit there have been plenty of times we heard his voice and turned the other way. Fortunately, he doesn’t merely let us wander off. He’ll come looking for us, as he said, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save those who were lost.” He won’t force us to follow, but he’ll keep prodding and poking into our lives until or unless we tell him not to.