Altar
Call – Opelika-Auburn News
Walter
Albritton
May
28, 2017
The Shepherd
patiently waits for the wayward
Jesus used many metaphors to explain his
identity. One of my favorites is that of the good shepherd. And that concept of
Jesus being the Good Shepherd has inspired many beautiful songs.
None is better than the one Bill Gaither
gave us:
Gentle
Shepherd, come and lead us, for we need you to help us find our way
Gentle
Shepherd come and feed us, for we need your strength from day to day
There’s
no other we can turn to who can help us face another day
Gentle
Shepherd, come and lead us, for we need you to help us find our way
That says it all. We are like sheep. We
need help! We cannot make it on our own. Without the help of the gentle
Shepherd we are lost.
There are times when we could not face
another day except for the assurance that Christ is with us. Fed and nourished
by his living Word, we find the strength to make it through the dark and lonely
night of bewilderment and suffering.
We all suffer but with the help of Christ
we can suffer with hope, hope for a new day. Doris Sanford is an example. She
tells about the day she had to drive her beloved foster child Jeremy to his new
adoptive home. Doris had cared for Jeremy for five years. Giving him up was
“like having surgery without anesthetic.”
Too choked to speak, Doris turned on the
car radio to distract herself and Jeremy from the pain. The song playing on the
radio was Gaither’s “Gentle Shepherd.” It was too much. She had to stop the car
on the side of the road while she and Jeremy sobbed. The words mirrored the cry
of their hearts:
There’s
no other we can turn to who can help us face another day.
Gentle
Shepherd, come and lead us, for we need you to help us find our way.
Somehow Doris endured the pain and found
the strength to bravely continue caring for other foster children. She credits
the Good Shepherd for giving her the help she needed. He never fails to do that
for those who trust him. Yet, sadly, some of us are slow to admit that, like
dumb sheep, we need the Shepherd’s help.
Unlike us, the Shepherd is patient, willing
to wait patiently for us to ask him to show us the way. His patience seems
limitless. For some of us, the Shepherd waits, and waits, and waits – until we
finally give up trying to do it our way. Stubborn pride fosters the fallacious
notion that we can say with Frank Sinatra, “I did it my way.”
The turning point for some of us is that
day we are finally overwhelmed by the Shepherd’s love for us. It dawns on us
that we can never do anything to make Christ stop loving us. He loves us
unconditionally. He wants us in his fold. He wants to know us so intimately
that we can recognize his voice when he speaks to us in the midst of the
deafening sounds of the world.
We are, after all, what the Bible says we
are: the sheep of his pasture. We did not crawl out of a swamp. He made us! And
he made us knowing that we would need a shepherd who would love us enough to
lay down his life for us to save us from our sins.
How amazing – this Shepherd’s love! My
life was radically changed when one day I heard him say to me, “Walter, I am the
good shepherd. I know my own; I know you and you know me, just as the Father
knows me and I know the Father.”
Makes me want to shout Hallelujah again! So
every morning, I try to remember to say to him, “Gentle Shepherd, come and lead
me, for I need you to help me find my way.”
One of two things is true: either the
Good Shepherd is guiding you today or he is patiently waiting for you to ask
for his help. + + +