‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me – just as the Father knows me and I know the Father – and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.'
John 10:11-16
“Woe to the shepherds, who have been feeding only themselves. You eat the fat, you take the wool, and you slaughter the fattest animal, but you do not feed the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bandaged the injured or brought back the strays or looked for the lost; rather, you have ruled them with harshness and tyranny."
Ezekiel 34:1-4
"With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures."
Abraham Lincoln, Baltimore Maryland, April 18, 1864d
"See what love
the Father has bestowed on us,
enabling us to be called the children of God,
and that is what we are.
If the world does not recognize us,
that is because it did not know him.
Beloved,
we are God’s children now.
What we shall be
has not yet been revealed.
However, we do know that when he appears
we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he really is."
1 John 3:1-2
And he said, ‘These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Never again will they hunger;
never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them,
nor any scorching heat.
For the Lamb at the center of the throne
will be their shepherd;
he will lead them to springs of living water.
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”’
Revelation 7:13-17
"What is a proper disposition towards life? It is to accept God as a loving father, who is full of tenderness and forgiveness for us, despite our willful blunders and hardened hearts. He yearns for us, as a father and mother yearn for the return of their most beloved child.
It is to accept that we are not lost, we are not abandoned. We are wandering like a wayward child, full of our own headstrong delusions. And our father waits expectantly, calling out for us through the darkness. He sends the spirit out to find us, a light to find our way home to him out of the gloom of the night."
Jesse,
Acceptance and Forgiveness, 2 January 2018
“The most important problem in the world today is your soul, for that is what the struggle is all about."
Fulton J. Sheen
"Shepherd me, O God
Beyond my wants
Beyond my fears
From death into life."
Marty Haugen,
Shepherd Me O God
