Last time we looked at the first
part of verse 3 of Psalm 100-“Know that the Lord is God.” Today, in the second
half of the verse we learn one reason to trust that the Lord is God: “It is he
that made us, and we are his; we are his
people, and the sheep of his pasture.”
A long time ago, when I was
learning about the many religions of the world, I told my father, “I’d rather
be a sheep than a sacred cow.” That was based more on the fact that sheep are
fuzzy and soft looking while cows aren’t that soft and cuddly. Sheep, on the
other hand, need more care than cows so they don’t get in trouble.
Jesus says, “I am the Good
Shepherd” (John 10). A shepherd has to watch out for his flock all the time.
Sheep will wander off and fall off a cliff or drown in a stream if the shepherd
isn’t watchful. (Last Sunday was Good Shepherd Sunday, so these readings are
probably fresh in your minds.)
Like sheep, we tend to prefer to
wander off. Isaiah reminds us “we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned
every one to his own way.” (Isaiah 53:6). We like to look for greener pastures
than the one set in front of us by our Shepherd. Along the way, we can fall off
a cliff or drown in a stream, too. Like the story in the Gospel, the shepherd
has to “leave the 99 in the wilderness, to seek the one that is lost.” This image of the Good Shepherd (by Alfred Soord) always touches me
with a reminder of how far the Shepherd, our Lord, must sometimes go to rescue
us. He is hanging over a cliff to retrieve the lost sheep.
Slowly, over our lives, we may
just learn to listen to the voice of our Shepherd above the siren calls of the
world. More often, out of love, the Shepherd has to come and find us and bring
us home to safety.
God made us to be individuals
and not puppets, so we have the free will to wander off. God made us as ‘his
people, the sheep of his pasture.’ We are in his care, even (maybe especially)
when we wander afield. We have the promise that God will seek and save us from
our wanderings. That is one way we can ‘know that the Lord is God.’ Feeling
safe in our Shepherd’s care is certainly a reason to ‘make a joyful noise’ as
verse one says. It also leads us into verse 4 where we are encouraged to ‘enter
his courts with thanksgiving…’
You can read another Good
Shepherd meditation from last Sunday here. Next time we will consider what it means to 'enter his courts with thanksgiving...!'
