Archive for October 22nd, 2009
Of Shepherds and Such
Why is God so hung up on this one image, this one metaphor, as He seeks to help us understand His relationship with us? I am talking about the image of sheep and shepherds. This image runs throughout the Bible. All sorts of leadership positions are tied to the term shepherd — prophet, priest, king, pastor, elder, teacher.
Clearly, one of the reasons this image was used had to do with the culture and nomadic lifestyle of early Israelites, yet even in a more urban world in which the church was born, this image and style of leadership was used to describe church leaders.
My weekly heartlight.org article, A Really Inconvenient Truth, focuses on this the subject of shepherd-leaders. Great chapters of Scripture focus on this subject as well — Ezekiel 34, Psalm 23 and John 10 are probably the three most notable, but many others exist.
So let’s do some thinking about the shepherd image in Scripture and answer some questions to get us going:
Why do you think the image of a shepherd, as a leader, is so important in the Bible?
Why is it used to describe God so frequently and intimately?
Who has been the shepherding leader in your life — whether the shepherd was an official leader or not?
For whom can you be a shepherding leader?
What trait of God as Shepherd blesses you most?