Today is Good Shepherd Sunday and by one of those odd coincidences that happen when you combine the Church Year with the secular calendar, today is also Mother’s Day. One temptation in the church might be to simply go with the flow and forget about the Good Shepherd and focus on Mother’s Day. The other temptation would be to imagine that the church exists in a vacuum and whatever is happening in the world around us is never mentioned. What is the proper approach to the day?
It certainly wouldn’t be one that focuses on the gift and forgets the giver. God is the giver of gifts. In His grace and mercy He gives us the gift of Mother’s. We receive God’s gift of Mother’s with thanksgiving.
The Good Shepherd is one of the most cherished images of our Savior, Jesus. It has been treasured by Christians from the earliest times. The first known statue of Jesus is Jesus as the Good Shepherd carrying a sheep on his shoulders. An unknown artist produced it in the early 300s. Even earlier is painting of Jesus as the Good Shepherd in a catacomb produced in the mid 200s.
This idea of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is so loved that countless churches have installed Good Shepherd stained glass windows. Many Lutheran churches bear the name “Good Shepherd.”
Personally I find this image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd very appealing. How often I have either lost my way or found myself stuck in the briars and brambles of life. The Good Shepherd has always been there to tend to me.
On Mother’s Day we can be thankful that the Good Shepherd sent Mother’s into our lives to tend to our needs, to bandage our scrapes, to comfort us in distress and to show us the same love that the Good Shepherd has for His sheep.
The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep!
Prayer: Thank you Lord for the Good Shepherd and His self-sacrificing love for me, His little lamb. Thank you for mothers who love their children with this same self-sacrificing love. Grant that I may learn to love in a self-sacrificing way. Amen.
Good Shepherd
Early Christian Sculpture, marble, 92cm high,
Vatican Museum, Rome, circa 300 AD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Good.Shepherd.Vatican.Museum.jpg
God’s richest blessings in Christ,
Pastor Philip Quardokus
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