Aw...Sheep

I was looking at a house last weekend that some oldsters were selling off to move down to Florida, and in what was obviously the grandsons room there were two things that caught me, one was a painting of a clown. Ugh. *shiver* if anyone out there actually likes clowns, I'd like you to comment on why. I'm thinking their time is up. Like Nick and Jessica.

The second was a picture of Jesus (the Michael-Landon-type-Jesus) playing baseball. It made me laugh at first and reminded me of the similar pic of Jesus playing basketball that my pal Eno had been given by her mom one year for Christmas that she had gotten at a yard sale. (Laughing out loud thinking about it). Eno hung it in her bathroom. I'm not sure why it is so funny to me, I love Jesus. I shouldn't be laughing at pictures of him in peoples bathrooms. I think the reason it is funny is that it's what people want him to be like. Helping little Bobby hold his bat upright, and smiling in his white robes and sandals.

However, I just stumbled across something that makes that image less comic and more sweet. I was preparing for a bible study I was teaching on the "I AM ____" saying of Jesus. As I poked around, I looked up the Hebrew word for "believe" as in Genesis 15:6 where it says "Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness" I almost cried reading what I read. The Hebrew root word 'aman' (in an alternate definition, I am admittedly NOT a Hebrew scholar) was as follows: "prop, to prop, to stay, to sustain, to support, to support with the arm, as in to carry a child. Made firm, lasting, nourish, foster father, foster mother or nurse. Support of a door, pillar. To be established. I thought those were such interesting word pictures for the same word used for the act of attaining righteousness. It suggested to me that our faith is as authored by God as it is perfected by him and our act of attaining righteousness through belief is the same word that means trust and to be held in his arms as a child. To lean on him, to trust.

Also a sweet image is that of the shepherd as 'the gate'. In my reading, I came across some notes describing a sheep pen gate. Back then the gates were structures made of stones with thorns across the top to prevent predators from getting into the sheep pen, and the shepherd would lay down in the door at nite, as a protector of the sheep, and would literally function as the door. A very different image to me indeed. As Jesus described himself to the people of the day as being "the gate" and "the way", as it I apply it to his shepherd analogy it melts from this image of a 'barrier' to the Father that you have to have the right code or key to get in, into a loving invitation to relationship with the 'gate' that will just step aside and let you in if you ask. Maybe even ruffle your hair as you walk by smiling up at him.

Indeed our God is sweet, and loving, and wants very much to welcome us into his protection, and to speak kindly to us as a shepherd does with his sheep. If a sheep doesn't recognize the voice of the shepherd, a shepherd would break the sheep's leg and drape it around his neck, and carry the sheep around with him, as to teach the sheep his voice and let its leg heal. It's so beautiful to me, how we think our circumstances are a broken leg, when sometimes they are just a ride with Daddy to get to know him better.