Continuing from Max Lucado and previous post: To prevent injury, the shepherd anoints the rams. He smears a slippery, greasy substance over the nose and head. This lubricant causes them to glance off rather than to crash into each other. They still tend to get hurt, however. And these wounds are the third reason the shepherd anoints the sheep. Most of the wounds the shepherd treats are simply the result of living in a pasture. . . .sheep get hurt. As a result, the shepherd regularly, often daily, inspects the sheep searching for cuts and abrasions. He doesn’t want a cut to worsen. He doesn’t want today’s wound to become tomorrow’s infection.
Neither does God. Just like sheep, we have wounds, but ours are wounds of the heart that come from disappointment after disappointment. If we’re not careful, those wounds lead to bitterness. And so just like sheep, we need to be treated. “He made us, and we belong to him; we are His people, the sheep he tends” (Ps. 100:3).
Sheep aren’t the only ones who need preventative care, and sheep aren’t the only ones who need a healing touch. We also get irritated with each other, butt heads, and then get wounded. Many of our disappointments in life begin as irritations. The large portion of our problems are not lion-sized attacks, but rather day-to-day swarm of frustrations and mishaps and heartaches. You don’t get invited to the dinner party. You don’t make the team. You don’t get the scholarship, Your boss doesn’t notice your hard work. Your husband doesn’t notice your new dress. Your neighbor doesn’t notice the mess in his yard. You find yourself more irritable, more gloomy, more. . . well more hurt.
Like the sheep, you don’t sleep well, you don’t eat well. You may even hit your head against a tree a few times. Or you may hit your head against a person. It’s amazing how hardheaded we can be with each other. Some of our deepest hurts come from butting our heads with people.
Like the sheep, the rest of our wounds come just from living in the pasture. The pasture of the sheep is much more appealing. The sheep have to face wounds from thorns and thistles. We have to face aging, loss and illness. Some of us face betrayal and injustice. Live long enough in this world, and most of us will face deep, deep hurts of some kind or another. So we, like the sheep get wounded. And we like the sheep have a shepherd. Remember the words we read? “We belong to him; we are his people, the sheep he tends” (Psalms 100:3). He will do for you what the shepherd does for the sheep. He will tend you.
Max Lucado Traveling Light—Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Intended to Bear (Thomas Nelson: Nashville: TN, 2001), 127-129
* Posts with a preamble asterisk are for a more general audience, not specific to teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
