Friday 8th May - Being sheep together

DAILY BYTE

We often talk about the importance of having a personal relationship with Jesus.

And, we talk about the importance of having good relationships with one another, but you see – God’s very self shows unified relationships. There is relationship between a father and a son and a spirit. God is community, and he sacrifices it all so we can all be joined together as one. So, our personal relationship with Jesus cannot be separated from our relationships with one another.

As we shepherd one another, we are first and foremost all called to follow the one voice of the good shepherd. One of the things I was first told when I became a minister was that you cannot be a good leader unless you are a good follower.

Followers join together, drawing strength from one another, sharing compassion with one another, and having a common direction. They walk on their journeys not as individuals, but they eat together, rest together, talk together, and argue together, and that’s not an easy way to live, is it?

I remember how difficult it was when I lived in community with three other women in graduate school. There were constant struggles, as we negotiated each other’s individual problems and hopes. And there were many things I wish we had done differently. But we were stubborn sheep, especially as people training for ministry who thought that our primary identity was one of shepherds. But during our final year of school, we began to go together and pray with one of the secretaries, who was struggling with cancer. Every Tuesday after a class we shared together, we would troop up to this lady’s office, stand in a circle, hold each others’ hands, pray for one another, and listen together for God’s voice.

We returned to being sheep, led by a good shepherd, laying down our life’s struggles and prayers together, and through that, God unified us from our scattered, individualist aims, and every week, God saved us.

The scripture encourages us this week that the seemingly small ways we reach out to one another, sacrificing for one another in the name of Christ’s unity actually work against the scattered divisiveness of the world, the church, and our closer relationships.

Because in the end, we don’t have to “like” all sheep. We will not like all people we encounter. But we are called to love them, and to be sheep, following the example of a good shepherd God who leads us and loves us all, as one flock.

Do you want to be a part of something greater than yourself? How does being Jesus’ “sheep” change the way you see your relationships with God and with other people?

GUIDING SCRIPTURE

John 10:16b

So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Gracious God, help us to follow you so that you will unite us with one another and bring your goodness into the world. Amen.