Coracle Trust E-Reflections
Lent: The Shepherd revisited
Wednesday 13 April 2011
Every experience in life, everything with which we have come in contact in life, is a chisel which has been cutting away at our life statue, molding, modifying, shaping it. We are part of all we have met. Everything we have seen, heard, felt or thought has had its hand in molding us, shaping us. Orison Swett Marden
The good shepherd, Pieter Brueghel the Younger
Read John 10: 1-18 and return "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
The reality of life
The image of the Good Shepherd is one that is familiar to anyone who has been told the stories of Jesus as a child. It is a companion to the image of Jesus as the “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” of the hymn. But, picture the scene described in this passage. It is full of violence. Thieves and robbers come to plunder and destroy; the wolf comes to desecrate and kill; the shepherd sacrifices himself to save his flock. A far cry from the idyllic pastoral scene that we may have imagined on hearing Jesus describe himself as the Good Shepherd. The peaceful image of the shepherd tending his flock is ripped apart by the reality of life.
Love and danger
The image, as we explore it, becomes not one of safety, but of “protected-ness”. The abundant life is not one without danger, but one where risk and challenge occur in a space where one who loves us and sacrifices himself for us, guards over us. The comfort of this image lies in our faith in the shepherd who is trustworthy, not the lack of danger, and the ultimate security that all will be united in Christ. In the end the life abundant is a life of rich experience, attended by companions who we have not yet met, whose names we do not know but who will be included by the grace of the Good Shepherd who welcomes all who recognise his voice into the flock. Jane Denniston(Trustee)