Grains of Sand

Pixabay (Public Domain) It’s all about the shepherd. Matthew 9:35-38 says: “ Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’ ” I was struck by the phrase, “ …harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd .” It wasn’t that the people of Israel didn’t have leaders—there was an overabundance of those, military, political and spiritual. What they didn’t have were shepherds. As a result the people were “ …harassed and helpless, ” left to the wolves. Dare I say that the same thing is true today? We have many leaders but few shepherds. Jesus called for prayer. We often pray for young people ...

sharonodeguaard.com (Google Images) I chuckled this morning as I read Psalm 40. David begins by saying, “ I waited patiently for the Lord… ” and ends by saying, “ O my God, do not delay ” (40:1, 17). Doesn’t that sound familiar? Take your time, Lord, but please hurry up! But in-between those two verses is a wealth of good stuff. This week I started to read Jesus, A Theography   by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola. In the book the authors seek to show the connection, in detail, between the Old Testament and the New Testament. “ What we will demonstrate in this book is that everything in the Bible points to Jesus—either His person, His work, or His character ” (page xviii). So as I read Psalm 40 this morning I looked at it with slightly different eyes, searching again for the connection. It wasn’t hard to find. I only had to look at the first three verses. “ I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire;...

Google Images The judgment has been pronounced. Eli, Shiloh’s priest, had not reined in his sons. As spiritual leaders they had failed miserably and God had announced, through the boy Samuel, that their dynasty would come to an ignoble end (1 Samuel 2:34-36). In 1 Samuel 4 we discover what that end was to be. The Philistines were pressing and Israel’s army was unable to get the upper hand against them. Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas, thought that by taking the ark of the covenant out of the Tabernacle and taking it into battle with them, that this would guarantee success against the Philistines. Wrong. The end result was that the Philistines won the battle, the two sons were killed, the ark captured and Eli died of the shock. Even Eli’s daughter-in-law died in childbirth that same day, declaring as she passed, “ The glory has departed from Israel ” (4:21). In the midst of all this tragedy and all the lessons to be learned from it, I thought about the ark. It was a sy...