+ The “generous” landowner pays those who come last the
same as those who came first because he senses that they need the money. It is
that “freedom” in the face of human need that makes him “like the Kingdom of
heaven.” For the Divine Shepherd lives to “strengthen the weak, heal the sick,
bind up the injured, bring back the strayed, and seek the lost.”
Probably was of the most
despicable passage in the Old Testament that Jesus was well aware of and irked
him to the core was the one we read today from the Prophet Ezekiel where the
Lord blasts bad shepherds of the sheep who pasture and pacify themselves rather
than the sheep; who feed off their milk,
wear their wool, slaughter their fatlings; who do not strengthen the weak nor
heal the sick nor bind up the injured; who do not bring back the strayed for
seek them lost, but lord it over them harshly and brutally.
There were most definitely
such shepherds in the time of Ezekiel. And the Lord swears that he is coming
against these shepherds. He will claim his sheep from them and put a stop to
their shepherding and he will shepherd them himself! The Lord God will look
after and tend my sheep.
Sometimes find ourselves in
the role of the sheep who have been badly shepherded by authority figures over
us. But sometimes we find ourselves as shepherds who could have done things a
little differently and with a purer motive of love of God first and then for
the brothers and sisters he places in our path each day. In either case we find
great comfort and hope in the fact that God is indeed interested in us
individually and personally – and that his justice can be stirred to wrath when
we are mistreated.
With the Lord as our true
shepherd, sometimes our only shepherd, we have no want and nothing to fear. We
are safe, looked after and cared for – all the days of our life!
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