May 14, 2026

John 10: 4 (NIV)

“When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.”

There’s a reason Jesus is called the “good shepherd” and not the “good cowboy.”*

The only first-hand knowledge I have of sheep comes from the one my cousins had as a pet when we were kids. His name was Baa and he butted like a goat, so we weren’t inclined to spend a lot of time getting to know his other character traits. My internet research into sheep behavior was a little more informative than my personal experience.

According to Wikipedia, “sheep have a strong tendency to follow and a leader may simply be the first individual to move.” If the first individual to move is another sheep, you can see how easily sheep could be led astray. In this verse, Jesus is referring to the shepherd’s programming of the sheep so that they will follow him. The one who has spoken to them since birth, the one who has fed them and cared for them, is the one they learn to follow. If a particular shepherd’s flock gets mixed in with another’s, his well-trained sheep will recognize his voice and separate themselves from the others to follow their shepherd.

Now that I have such vast knowledge of sheep behavior (!), I understand that this verse is not about the sheep but about the shepherd. I have always tried to read into it that the sheep have some responsibility to know the shepherd’s voice but Jesus called himself the “good shepherd” and he demonstrated good shepherding techniques. We know his voice because of his efforts to train his flock to follow him: care, feeding, protection. We may choose to ignore his voice, stupid sheep that we are, but he has done all that he can to make us want to choose him.

Don’t be one of those sheep who follows the first individual to move. The Good Shepherd has taught you his voice – follow him to safe pasture and abundant provision.

There is a difference between getting sheep into a pen and teaching them to respond to the voice of the Good Shepherd! . . . Sheep that are simply conditioned to inhabit a pen are easily lost. Sheep that have learned to hear and obey the voice of the shepherd never lack sustenance and direction.*

May 13, 2026

Job 12: 5 (NIV)

“Men at ease have contempt for misfortune as the fate of those whose feet are slipping.”

When people are little more than a punch line, it’s hard to honestly claim you love them.*

I have a friend who used to be homeless – well, she lived in a tent – but now she is employed and housed and enrolled in college. She is also a Christian but she admits that she sometimes struggles with finding compassion in her heart for her former associates in the down-and-out community. It’s sad but true: the further removed we are from our misfortune, the more our compassion fades. If we have overcome a difficult past, we tend to look down on those who are still wallowing in the same difficulties. We can be downright harsh when we see someone who has “brought it on himself.”

It’s even worse for those of us who have never walked in those hand-me-down shoes. What is our problem? Do we think it’s contagious . . . that we can catch bad luck by looking at it? No, I can’t relate to my friend’s life on the street. I don’t know what it feels like to lose a child or suffer with a lifelong illness. But I do know about failed marriage and the loss of a career.  Do I deserve contempt because those heartbreaks resulted, at least in part, from my bad choices? 

One Bible commentator says that it is a “universal trait of our fallen human nature” to despise the unfortunate.* God forgive me for all the times that I have felt superior to another and thought “There but for the grace of God go I” in the snottiest sense of the phrase. Jesus knew every loser’s backstory, saw through every liar’s lies, and foresaw every sinner’s slip back into the old life, but he loved them anyway. And good for me that he still does because I am that loser, that liar, that sinner. 

We can’t sit back at ease, feeling contempt for those whose misfortunes are the inevitable result of their poor choices and call ourselves followers of Jesus. Followers of Jesus demonstrate compassion and perhaps, in time, we learn to feel it, too.

Love moves towards others in the spirit of self-sacrifice: fear shrinks from others in the spirit of self-preservation.*

May 12, 2026

Nehemiah 9: 8 (NIV)

“You have kept your promises because you are righteous.”

God is who He is.*

It’s hard to single out just one attribute of God to explain his actions in any particular situation. Everything he does is a result of everything he is. When we thank him for keeping his promises, we might also praise him for his lovingkindness. When the Levites called out to the Lord as recorded here in Nehemiah, they were mindful of his righteousness. God can’t not keep his promises. He wouldn’t be righteous if he couldn’t be trusted.

Which of God’s attributes provides you with the most comfort? I think I find the most comfort in his consistency – or immutability, I believe is the technical term. He is true to himself always. He never has “one of those days” when he just doesn’t feel like being everywhere at once. He isn’t wishy-washy about being merciful. With God, all things are possible – except that it is impossible for God not to be God. 

Want to learn more about the attributes of God – the characteristics that set him apart from all other beings? Google “attributes of God” and read the articles, being careful to check the scriptures to ascertain that they are accurate and applicable. Then take some time to praise God for who he is and how each of his attributes impacts your life in a positive way.*

Like true north, God is a fixed point of reference that never changes and will always be exactly where he’s supposed to be.*

May 11, 2026

I Samuel 31: 11-13 (NIV)

When the people of Jabesh Gilead heard of what the Philistines had done to Saul, all their valiant men journeyed through the night to Beth Shan. They took down the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall . . . and went to Jabesh, where they burned them. Then they took their bones and buried them under a tamarisk tree . . ., and they fasted seven days.

You can easily become obsessed with other people’s wrongs against you.*

We know we’re supposed to forgive people when they have done us wrong so we work at it. Lots of prayer and attitude adjustments can get us there. But forgetting is another thing. The damage is done; the consequences may last a lifetime; there is always something there to remind you . . . Why is it, though, that we can recall a person’s bad behavior in such vivid detail that it completely obliterates any good they may have done?

The people of Jabesh Gilead weren’t clueless. They knew the kind of man that Saul had become. But they also remembered and honored the good that he had done for them in his first military action as king* (see I Samuel 11). Because Saul had come to their rescue many years earlier, these brave men of Jabesh Gilead risked their lives to provide Saul and his sons with a proper burial. 

Are you working through the stages of forgiving and forgetting? Perhaps you could accelerate the process if you worked on forgiving and remembering. Ask God to help you find forgiveness in your heart and to help you remember something good about your offender. Replace that painful memory with a positive thought. Does he love his family? Is he generous to others? Is she nice to other people – even if she wasn’t to you? Maybe you used to be friends. Do you have any happy memories of that time? Is this person really all bad? 

Would you like to be remembered for the time you were rude to the cashier at Publix? Do you want to go down in history for making someone cry – even if it was unintentional? Do the mean and hateful things you say define you more than the good and loving ones? Remember the good that other people do and perhaps they will do the same for you.

What if God limited his forgiveness of us based on our forgiveness of others?*

May 10, 2026

Leviticus 19: 9 (NIV)

“When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God.”

Jesus . . . taught that care for the poor is an integral part of one’s relationship with God.*

A friend – a single guy – arrived in Florida with a few dollars in his wallet and no home to go to. By the time I met him, he had a good job and a place to live, and was actively involved in church. Because of his past circumstances, he had a heart for the down-and-out, so one day, in the course of his job delivering electronic equipment, he encountered a man displaying the ubiquitous will work for food sign. My friend stopped and told the man he would pay him if he would help him unload the truck. The man said, “Couldn’t you just give me the money?”

Providing for the poor is the duty of the people who aren’t poor. God does not distinguish between the deserving poor and the deadbeat poor. There was bound to be abusers of the system described here but God put it in place for the benefit of those who could not help themselves. Should we allow a person to go hungry just because someone else is a scam artist? And if a man is hungry because of his own bad choices, is he not still hungry?  Is there any record of Jesus saying, “I’ll help you but you have to promise not to sell the food to buy cigarettes”? Jesus’ charity came with no strings attached.

Read the verse again. Note that God didn’t impose a law that prevented the farmer from making a profit from his crop. As a matter of fact, what God required was no hardship at all. The farmer was not going to miss the grain or the grapes that got left behind in the initial harvest, but it could make all the difference to a single mom and her kids or an old drunk down on his luck. And take note of that final, ominous pronouncement: I am the Lord your God. Are you going to argue with him?

Who do we think we are, showing no grace to those who need it most?*

May 9, 2026

Leviticus 14: 2-7 (NIV)

“These are the regulations for the diseased person at the time of his ceremonial cleansing . . . If the person has been healed of his . . . disease, the priest shall order that two live clean birds and some cedar wood, scarlet yarn and hyssop be brought for the one to be cleansed. Then the priest shall order that one of the birds be killed over fresh water in a clay pot. He is then to take the live bird and dip it, together with the cedar wood, the scarlet yarn and the hyssop, into the blood of the bird that was killed . . . Seven times he shall sprinkle the one to be cleansed of the infectious disease and pronounce him clean. Then he is to release the live bird in the open fields.”

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple*

When I was a little girl, my grandmother, who had grown up in the rough world of coal-mining camps in Kentucky and who was somewhat superstitious, came down with a case of shingles. I remember hearing her talk about a “treatment” for her ailment that included the blood of a black rooster. I don’t recall if she tried it or not but the ritual described here for the cleansing of those healed of skin diseases is even more bizarre.

Is there any medical value to the procedure described in this passage? What is the symbolic meaning? Did anyone ever know? Hundreds of years later, these are the same instructions Jesus gave to the man he healed of leprosy (Matthew 8: 4). What if the point was merely to teach us about obedience and trust? God is not obligated to explain anything to us. More often than not the whys are never revealed to us. Perhaps the sometimes mysterious requirements of the Christian life are in place merely to allow us to practice walking by faith.

This elaborate ceremony that was to be performed for cleansing after a person was healed contrasts vividly with the simplicity and symbolism of the washing away of our sins in baptism. While killing a bird over fresh water in a clay pot was just one of the many steps in the cleansing ritual, baptism is a two-step procedure: go down into the water; come up out of the water. How complicated is that?

You know how an attorney says, ‘In a courtroom, never ask a question you do not know the answer to.’ I think it’s a great exercise of faith to ask the question you don’t know the answer to, and rest in the knowledge that you may not have an answer today, tomorrow, or ever in this life.*

May 8, 2026

Exodus 4: 2 (NIV)

Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” “A staff," he replied.

Whatever You have called me to do, You will enable me to do it.*

After this bit of dialogue between God and Moses, God proceeds to paint a word picture by turning the rod into a snake and back into a rod; by afflicting Moses with leprosy and then healing him from it; and by telling Moses to pour some Nile River water on the ground and watch it turn to blood. All of this was for the purpose of proving Moses’ credentials as God’s spokesman to the Egyptians.

And then God revealed what he required of Moses. He didn’t ask him to pick up that staff with which he was so comfortable and adept. Moses’ hard-earned shepherding skills were a plus in the job God is calling him to, and his staff comes in handy later, but for now God wants Moses to step out of his comfort zone and become a public speaker. Moses begged him to send someone else, which made God angry, but he relented and agreed to use Moses’ more articulate brother, Aaron, to speak for him. God promised to work with Moses and Aaron, teaching them what to say and do, but Aaron would be the principal mouth-piece. Finally, God told Moses to pick up the staff so that he could perform miraculous signs with it. 

Let’s look at three life-lessons we can harvest from this passage. 

1. Most of the time, God uses us where he has already gifted us, but when he calls us to be used in ways that exceed our natural capabilities, it requires submission on our part, and it results in glory for the Lord. God used Moses mightily but what more could have been accomplished if Moses had trusted God with his weakness? 
2. If we refuse the job offer, God will find someone else to fulfill his purpose. 
3. The tools in our hands can be repurposed when we surrender them to God. A shepherd’s staff can become a magic wand! 

We all need reminders that we become useful to the Kingdom when we give back to God what he has given us.

Some of the most effective Christians I have known are people without dramatic talents and special abilities, or even exciting personalities; yet God has used them in a marvelous way. Why? Because they are becoming more and more like Jesus Christ. They have the kind of character and conduct that God can trust with blessing. They are fruitful because they are faithful; they are effective because they are growing in their Christian experience.*