Help us, O God of our salvation! Help us for the glory of your name. Save us and forgive our sins for the honour of your name…Then we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will thank you forever and ever, praising your greatness from generation to generation.

(Psalm 79.9&13)

The Lord is my shepherd; I have all that I need…

(Psalm 23)

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd sacrifices his life for the sheep……I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep and they know me, just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. …My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them away from me, for my Father has given them to me, and he is more powerful than anyone else. No one can snatch them from the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.

(John 10.11,14&15,27-30)

One of God’s many gifts to his children, are the rest of his children! How often are you comforted, encouraged, inspired or helpfully chastened and challenged by other believers? Recently, a friend challenged me to think again about a passage and a concept with which I am so familiar that I realise I had stopped thinking about it! I think it is one of the traps into which long-time believers can easily fall, failing to register the depth of meaning in a passage because we think we understand and have already grasped all it has for us..Praise God, that he doesn’t leave us to our foolishness, but stirs us up to look again, to seek to learn again – old lessons for a new time of life, or new lessons altogether!

The gospel of John contains several passages in which Jesus refers to his people as sheep, and himself as shepherd, building on an image used in the Old Testament by the psalmists and prophets where the people of Israel are God’s flock, and most famously where David rejoices in having the Lord God as his shepherd. Sheep and the whole business of shepherding was as familiar to Jesus’ audience as our own daily routines are to us. The character of sheep, and the necessary qualifications of a good shepherd were  widely understood, so that when Jesus used these things in his teaching, everyone could grasp the message.

We – as sheep who have gone astray, vulnerable and foolish, needing care and protection – have in Christ the ideal and perfect Shepherd for our souls. His love for us – the love which took him to Calvary on our behalf – has shown the value which is placed upon us, a price beyond imagining. He knows us, not merely about us as statistics, but an intimate understanding and delighting in, which mirrors the joyous communion within the Trinity. How hard we find it to let this truth sink deeply into our understanding, to let it inform our thinking about God, and about ourselves as his beloved and chosen people!

By the presence of the Holy Spirit within us, we are increasingly able to recognise the voice of our truth-telling beloved Shepherd, to discern the false voices which might beguile us away from him, and to reject them. That Spirit is also the guarantee of his gift to us, the gift of eternal life, which is the hope of all who trust in Christ – every straying, tired, despairing, or wilful sheep has a place in the Shepherd’s heart and he will not give up on any who truly call him Lord.

Finally, we are safe, and can have absolute assurance of the grasp which Christ has upon us. It is almost as though Jesus were gently boasting here, in the manner of a child..’my Dad is so much stronger than anyone else!!’ But in this case, it is no idle boast, but an earnest reassurance from our Good Shepherd that we need have no fear about our eternal security. I wonder if Paul was remembering these words of Jesus when he wrote this:

Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?..No despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow – not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below – indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(Romans 8.35-39)

I am content to be a sheep; to accept my foolishness and utter need of constant care from a shepherd who has demonstrated such love for me and promised such a future. And I am thankful for other members of the flock who do so much to help me to hear his voice more clearly, and to follow him more nearly!