Stranger Danger and Voice Choice
I love similes. And metaphors. And especially symbols.
My students tell me, “You have to, Mrs. G, you’re an English teacher!” I try to convince them that they’ve got their cause-and-effect relationship switched: I have always loved figures of speech. So, I became an English teacher to spend more time with literature and literary devices!
The Bible holds some of the world’s greatest literature. I think God must love similes and metaphors and symbols, just like I do — He sure inspired His writers to use lots of them!
The metaphors that caught my eye this morning, as I was exploring John 10:1-21, are familiar ones: “I am the gate for the sheep,” says Jesus, and “I am the good shepherd.”
The sheep who “come in and go out” through Him will “find pasture.” This reminds me of Psalm 18:19a — “he brought me out into a spacious place” — and, of course, Psalm 23:2-3a — “he makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.”
Oh, how I long for green pastures, spacious places, quiet waters — for restoration of my soul!
Why do these seem so elusive in my day-to-day life?
An answer for me, at least, becomes clear through John 10:3-5: “The watch-man opens the gate for [the shepherd], and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”
Sheep won’t follow a stranger’s voice. They only follow the voice of their shepherd. This saves them, because the stranger’s true identity is revealed, in verse 10, as a thief who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”
Sheep have an intuitive sense of “stranger danger” that serves them well. Their “run away” instinct keeps them from being stolen, killed, and destroyed. They run away from danger — the stranger/thief — and follow their shepherd to safety, to quiet green spacious pastures.
But what about me? Oh, I’d love to say “I will never follow a stranger; in fact, I run away from the thief because I don’t recognize his voice.”
The problem is, I do.
I recognize the stranger’s voice, because I stop following the shepherd long enough to chat with the thief. Why? Sometimes it’s curiosity. Sometimes it’s defiance. Sometimes it’s ennui.
Always, I tell myself that I’ll stop for just a moment, chat for just a second, and then get right back to following the shepherd. As if a thief and murderer will part so easily with his prey.
I listen to the stranger. And I believe myself.
Both such destructive choices of voices! When I listen to the stranger and when I listen to myself, my life is stolen and destroyed. (Click to Tweet this.)
When I listen to Christ’s Words, however, I hear an ironically symbolic juxtaposition. He reminds me that the “shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”…”that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
“Stranger Danger and Voice Choice”
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