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I’m the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. -John 10:11
I recently came across a story that made me think of Jesus’ love. It is about a farmer and one of his mares that he had rescued and adopted from an animal shelter. The quoted text was taken (as is) from one of Richard Wagamese’s books, Starlight, pp. 203-204. According to the author, “the fellow who had her [the mare] didn’t take care of her. She was sick and dehydrated, starving, beaten, skittish as hell. She wouldn’t even let me close for the longest time, and I had to keep her in a pen by herself because she was fearful of other horses. I’d come out here and roll up a blanket and spend the night with her. It took weeks, but she came to trust me and soon, I could feed her oats out of my hand. She let me take her out, and I’d walk her every day by the halter around the pasture because all the hurts had made her forget how to be a horse. Then I started to trot, then full out run and pretty soon when she got her strength back, I could turn her loose, and she’d gallop and play like the horse she was meant to be. I ’didn’t try to change her at all. I just let her find herself in the love I was giving. Me and that little mare moved into it together, and she became a good horse. It didn’t make all the hurt she felt disappear. It didn’t change anything that came before. It just made her able to forget and live a different way. The way she was meant to.”
The more I read this fictional story, the more I saw the image and character of Jesus throughout the text. When Jesus came, he found us in a deplorable state. We had been beaten and abused for many years under the power of the devil and his servants. We didn’t even know who we were, and yet we were created to be overcomers, rule with authority, run and gallop like horses. We had lost the hope of living the life God had designed us for. We lived from one failure to another. Jesus’ work of restoration was an act of love. He Just loved us, unconditional love as a good shepherd who lays his life for the sheep. He did not try to change us overnight, but slowly he made us find ourselves in his love. He did not take away the hurt we suffered in the hands of the devil, but he made us forget it even existed. We moved in that journey together with him all the steps of the way. He is still moving with us on that journey until the day he will present us to the Father in the state that God had in mind for us. David experienced the love of the Shepherd, so he wrote, “the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1). He continued explaining why. Because the Shepherd will take care of his physical needs; he will give him protection from the enemies; he will not let him get lost along the way; he will always be there for him. That is the love of the Shepherd.
As I thought about the story above, I was reminded of Mary of Magdalen. When Jesus first met Mary, she had already lived many years under the abuse of Satan and the power of sin. She was at the point of being stoned to death (John 8:1-11). Jesus did not rush her with too much preaching and admonishing. He just let her understand that he loved her the way she was, but at the same time, he made her realize it was for her to change her way of living. A few days later, the same woman was back to see Jesus with an alabaster of expensive oil (Luke 7:36-50). It took her so much courage to overcome the stigma as a sinful woman and get close to a "prophet". It took her courage to decide to go into a men's assembly when women at that time were not allowed to. But that is what the unconditional love of God can do to us. It gives us wings to do things, to overcome the stigma, to defy the cultural barriers or other barriers to go to Jesus and allow him to restore us to what God had for us in the first place. Did you know that that same Mary of Magdalen is among the first preachers of the good news of the gospel? Yes, she was the first to be told by angels of Jesus' resurrection. Yes, she was the first to see the resurrected Jesus. Yes, she was transformed by the Shepherd's unconditional love and lived a fulfilled life the way she was meant to. If you allow Jesu to work in you, you will also experience that kind of life, a total victory over your past failures, mistakes and hurts. You will receive a total restoration.
