![]() When they’re all within spitting distance of the shepherd, he walks down to the ski area parking lot, and they follow.įrom there, he leads the sheep through town, right through the main street, where some people are sitting down to eat ice cream and roasted chestnuts and where other people are buying their clothes and doing their banking. Their bells are really ringing now as some of the sheep are running toward the shepherd. All the sheep come running toward him, first the older sheep and then the lambs. He isn’t shouting or cajoling he’s just speaking. Suddenly the man says a few German words. So later that day I’m climbing with my friend Martin, and at one point I’m just hanging from the rope…Then I notice, far up the slope, a man and his son walking down the mountain, passing through the sheep. ![]() They began talking loudly to each other and instantly fled from me as if I were a wolf. We were climbing near the bottom of a ski area … this steep green slope where delightful flock of sheep all week, their bells ringing as they gaze and munch the lush Alpine meadow… I tried to speak gently… and though this was their slope and not mine, their food and not mine, their country and not mine, my presence was no comfort to them. ![]() One glorious autumn…I spent an afternoon climbing with a friend who grew up raising sheep in the Alps. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. Bailey, Copyright (c) 2014, p.49, by Kenneth E. Taken from The Good Shepherd: A Thousand-Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testamentby Kenneth E. The sheep’s only security is the shepherd. They can butt other sheep, but that ability will not protect them from a wolf or a bear. But the sheep have no bite or claws and cannot outrun any serious predator. In his excellent study of the famous Biblical passage on shepherds, ( The Good Shepherd: A Thousand Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament ), scholar Ken Bailey provides helpful context to understand why it is that the psalmist chose the metaphor of a good shepherd and sheep to describe his relationship with God. Bailey, Copyright (c) 2014, p.60 by Kenneth E. Taken from The Good Shepherd: A Thousand-Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament by Kenneth E. The homeward path from the “still waters” was familiar to them, and when the time came they followed it, much to the relief of the shepherd. Terrified, he rushed back to the village and to his delight discovered that the flock had, on their own, wandered home. He told me of how on one occasion he fell asleep in the field with his sheep during the afternoon siesta and awoke some time later only to discover that the flock was gone. While visiting Greece in the late 1990s, I was privileged to have an informative chat with a Greek taxi driver who had worked as a shepherd in his youth. In his excellent study of the famous Biblical passage on shepherds, ( The Good Shepherd: A Thousand Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament ), scholar Ken Bailey provides helpful context to what shepherding looks like in the Middle East, even up to today: Bailey, Copyright (c) 2014, p.43, by Kenneth E. ![]() No turbid streams or ruffled rivulets will tempt them. They continue until every last one of them had found a quiet little pool between stones showing up above the ripples. I learned the valuable lesson that they do not drink from rippling waters. Yet, at their arrival, as I watched them, only a few would be drinking, while others all along the edge of the water, like the pedestrians on a fashionable street in a great metropolis, keep passing each other up and down the stream. He writes, Within sound and sight of water they (the sheep) would all begin to run toward it, showing that they were very thirsty. In that book he records his surprise on discovering that his sheep would not drink from moving water. Later in life, after becoming an Armenian Methodist pastor in America, he wrote a book about his experiences as a shepherd. Born into a family of builders, his father took him out of school to herd a flock of more than a hundred sheep. Krikorian grew up in a village near Tarsus in southeast Turkey. In this short excerpt, scholar Ken Bailey provides context to the 23 rd Psalm: “He leads me besides quiet waters”:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |