The Sheep Who Tries to Shepherd Herself
“The sheep who tries to shepherd herself” is written at the top of a page of my journal in February of this past year. It’s an absurd idea that I wish someone would turn into a humorous children’s book, sort of an opposite to “The Little Red Hen.”
I had been home from the hospital for two weeks at that point and had been sick over a month. I was on oxygen 24/7, unable to stay at home by myself, and every move was costly in terms of my oxygen saturation. I don’t think I had even walked outside yet. Healing was incremental, so slow I couldn’t see it at all from one day to the next. It was hard not to despair, to forget what normal was, to wonder if I’d ever fully recover.
A friend sent me 1 Peter 5:10, “After you have suffered a little while, our God, who is full of kindness through Christ, will give you his eternal glory. He personally will come and pick you up, and set you firmly in place, and make you stronger than ever.”
Where is that place? I wondered. And when is He coming?
The image of a shepherd picking up a sheep, carrying it on his shoulders, giving it time to heal and taking to a more secure place entered my mind as I read that verse via text message. Later that same day another friend sent me Psalm 23. (You can’t make this stuff up!)
He makes me like down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.
I was lying down a lot - most of January, February and March. I was made to lie down, often prone, and was unable to provide for myself. It was humbling and hard. I didn’t realize how much I want to be self-sufficient, to earn my keep, to not be needy. I was OK with that leads me in the paths of righteousness part of God as Shepherd, but the being made to lie down, be still, be fed and watered by someone else, and wait on the restoration of my health - that part of the shepherding I wanted to do for myself.
A few days after recognizing my resistance, I received two text messages: one at 5:49 a.m. and another at 6:11 a.m. The first one was a friend in Montgomery. The second was a friend from Auburn. Each sent me a photograph of the exact same page in her devotional book. The next morning, I received a text from a friend in Atlanta sending me the same page from the same book! None of these women know each other. (Again, you can’t make this stuff up!) The gist of the message was thankfulness for the conditions that cause one to be still, not wishing away the quiet hours or the bodily limitations, but looking for God’s presence in them. Isaiah 30:15 was the passage on which this message was based:
Therefore, the Lord God,
the holy one of Israel, says:
In return and rest you will be saved;
quietness and trust will be your strength—
but you refused.
Those last three words of the prophet are tragic. God was offering his people salvation, but they refused. Salvation was in the turning, the changing, the resting - but they couldn’t do it. I empathize with the Israelites. Enduring suffering or waiting for healing is much easier when the crisis is short-lived, when you don’t actually have to change your habits of mind or body. Stillness and resting when you don’t like the pasture you’re in or the posture you have to hold is counterintuitive. Everything in us screams for progress or at least comfort.
The problem is that we’re sheep and we really have no clue what a path of righteousness is or where to find still water or green pastures. Nothing in our culture points us toward the restoration of our souls. In fact, most of culture points us in the exact opposite direction, toward what depletes our souls.
When the opportunity to rest or be still does come (and looks like suffering, endurance, limitations, loss or grief), we don’t recognize it for what it is, an invitation to be cared for and restored by the Great Shepherd of the Sheep; and instead we refuse the very quietness and trust that will give us strength.
Today Psalm 23 showed up in my devotional again. All these months later. I was asked to put each phrase in my own words. That is not merely a cognitive exercise in paraphrasing, rather it’s a way to make you own the truth. When I begin to reword “The Lord is my Shepherd,” I acknowledge who shepherds are and what they do. They own the sheep; therefore, they guard them, protect them, find places for them to eat and drink, choose safe places for them to lie down and sleep, and give them medical attention when they need it. They care for every detail of the lives of their sheep. Who would not want that?
I realized again the absurdity of a sheep trying to shepherd herself.
