by Quin Hillyer at PJ Media;
Three of today’s four readings use the image of the Great Shepherd – and this holy metaphor of shepherd and sheep (and Lamb of God) has become so familiar that we sometimes take it for granted. It also loses power with most of us because few of us (myself included) experience, or come close to fully understanding, the cultural milieu of what was still a largely agrarian society and the particular hardships involved in tending sheep – especially in a semi-desert environment where predators prowl.
But if you read enough and listen enough to those who do know, you can intellectually comprehend, even if you don’t automatically intuit it at your very core, that the role of the shepherd was not merely passive and certainly not idyllic, but rather active and challenging…..
See the rest of the column here.
