Summer, 1955.  A single mom struggles to make a life for herself and her pre-schooler after leaving her unfaithful husband.  A shirttail relative takes her in until she can figure out what to do.  She decides to swallow her pride and go home to her recently widowed mother in another city.  She holds her head high, finds a new job, and saves enough for her own apartment. She serves faithfully in the church she grew up in using her musical gift to play for the children.  She isn’t bitter about being a single mother in a community of married people. She doesn’t complain.  She works long hours to barely make ends meet.

Summer, 1967.  The mother calls a taxi for a ride to the hospital.  She is too sick to drive herself and her teenage daughter isn’t old enough to have a license, so she goes alone.  The diagnosis is bleak, but she doesn’t whine about it.  Long hospital stays follow.

Spring, 1968.  The mother dies, leaving her sixteen-year-old daughter alone.  But she has taught her daughter how to call out to the Good Shepherd whom she followed with all her heart.  And her daughter is not alone.

“He will feed his flock like a shepherd.
He will carry the lambs in his arms,
holding them close to his heart.
He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young.”  Isaiah 40:11

We’ve all heard that Jesus is the good Shepherd.  And we can certainly identify with being a sheep.  The times when we are not in control of our circumstances, and we feel less than powerful, we know we need someone bigger than ourselves to lend us a hand.  In a matter of seconds, an event can change our lives forever:  an auto accident, a diagnosis, a death.  In those times, we instinctively turn to God.

Jesus is our shepherd, but interestingly, he is also called a lamb.  Not even a grown sheep, just a defenseless lamb. Jesus put aside his God-power to become a defenseless sacrificial lamb.  He understands how we feel when things have gone all wrong.

“Stop weeping!  Look, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the heir to David’s throne, has won the victory.  Then I saw a Lamb that looked like it had been slaughtered, but it was now standing before the throne… and they sang a new song, ‘You are worthy…for you were slaughtered and your blood has ransomed people for God’”  Revelation 5:5,6,9

He is the lamb.  He is the shepherd.  He is the lion.  He is quiet.  He roars.  He is gentle.  He is powerful.  He is high enough, deep enough, wide enough, strong enough, caring enough, gentle enough to care for all people in all circumstances. He was, he is, he always will be enough for us.  He is enough to be the Lord of the football player, the soldier, the factory worker, the executive, the artist, the mother, the father, the child.  He is the infinite God in flesh and bones.  The great paradox.

“He (Jesus) existed in the beginning with God.
God created everything through him,
and nothing was created except through him.”  John 1:2-3

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”  Jesus in Revelation 22:13

“Yes, the Sovereign Lord is coming in power.
He will rule with a powerful arm.
See, he brings his reward with him as he comes.

He will feed his flock like a shepherd.
He will carry the lambs in his arms,
holding them close to his heart.
He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young.

Who else has held the oceans in his hand?
Who has measured off the heavens with his fingers?
Who else knows the weight of the earth
or has weighed the mountains and hills on a scale?”  Isaiah 40:10-12

He understands our weakness because he also was a weak human being with real emotions and physical limitations. He was born a helpless human infant.  He was killed at the hands of the most powerful human government of the time.  He was the Lamb.  He knows that sometimes we need to be carried because he is the good shepherd who motivated by love goes after the wayward one and happily carries him home.  He also carries the little lambs who aren’t strong enough yet to walk long distances to greener pastures.  He is the good Shepherd.  He feels our pain and weakness and stands between us and our enemy in roaring power protecting us from Satan.  He is the Lion.

“Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  John 1:29

“I am the good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.”  John 10:11

“Look, the Lion of the tribe of Judah has won the victory.”  Revelation 5:5

He is high enough, deep enough, wide enough, strong enough, caring enough, gentle enough to help us in every situation.  I can vouch for that.  I am the daughter in the story above who was left alone after my mother’s death.  But not alone.

“he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist.”   Acts 17:27