Years ago, I attended a retreat and arrived early at the Monastery. I was looking around and found some sheep in a fenced in field, so I thought I’d go make some friends. I pulled up some grass, went to the fence, clicked my tongue, some sheep lifted their heads and then went back to what they were doing. I moved around the fence, tried the same tactic on the other side, nothing!
As I was watching, with the sheep ignoring me,
a loud engine started revving up back in the barn. Sounded like a car ready for a drag race. Suddenly a Monk, dressed in his robes, came speeding out of the barn on a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle, and another Monk opened the gate to where the sheep had been standing. You should have seen it, this Monk straddling the vehicle speeding through the gate, robes flying in the wind behind him, and the sheep running towards him as he took a sharp turn in the field kicking up dirt and grass and heading back for the barn where every sheep trotted as fast as it could go behind him through barn door. The sheep certainly know the Shepherd! The sheep know the Shepherd’s Voice…or Noise!
John’s Gospel, chapter ten says,”Whenever the Shepherd has gathered all of his sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” “The sheep know the shepherd!” “The sheep know the Shepherd’s voice or sound.”
I imagine if only God would make that kind of noisy entrance that the Monk made on that four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle into our lives, then we, too, would know God was here in our life and it would be easier to recognize and follow God.
Is God only communicating from outside of us in the heavens, through someone who is a more “spiritual” person or possibly in Nature’s Sunset’s and flowers? Is it possible God could be speaking within us, in our Soul, our True Self as they call it today? We need Silence to take the time to listen and hear the voice of God within Us.
Listening to our own inner life where God’s Spirit resides means trusting our own hunches, intuition, feeling and emotions, even our own wisdom. We need to seek that deep down soul, the source of our true self. Could hearing that voice of the Shepherd, the Spirit of God deep in our Soul, calling us into following him be the beginning of releasing us from our shame, guilt, emotional woundedness, and into experiencing God’s love for us.
We are God’s sheep, we hear the sound of the Shepherd, we see the shepherd, we feel his affirmation, we know his love and that happens in the ordinary hours of living, day to day. That’s what restores our soul, revives it and gives us life, helps us become who we truly are as a person so we do not have to cover up and pretend to be something we’re not.
The affirmation from God comes through relationship with others when we let it sink deep down into our soul rather than ignore it.
A couple of months ago Ginny and I were in a Duncan Donuts, I know that’s hard to believe. We were drinking our coffee and eating a Boston cream. A father was next to us with his young daughter, so I waved to his daughter, and she smiled and waved back. About ten minutes later the little girl and her dad were leaving and as she was going out the door, she turned to me and said, “My Dad and I are going to see some animals, Bye.” Connection! What was that? “I see you. ”I like you.” “I befriend you”. Was that a God moment?
When you and I come to worship have we been able to share our gratitude for an experience where we have sensed God’s nearness or presence in our life? The Shepherd, God, brings healing, affirmation, challenge, joy, guidance into our lives through other people we meet during the week or things we might read, or art we might have paid attention to, animals we might have experienced, or something out of generosity we might have done for someone else. Not only outside of us but deep within us, in our soul, when we make time to let these experiences sink into our True Self and then pay attention and listen to God’s voice as our soul is being restored.
Do you have an idea or a sense, or a feeling of where or when God in Christ has worked in your life, in your ordinary weekly days?
The poet Mary Oliver writes, “Ten times a day something happens to me like this- some strengthening throb of amazement-some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”
What four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle will God pull up next to you this week? Be attentive to The Shepherd’s presence within your life restoring your soul.