Baa, baa, black sheep
Was at my once-a-month "sort of" Bible study last night and we discussed, amongst other things, the concept of Jesus as our Shepherd-King.
When we were talking about Jesus as our shepherd, I had this sudden flash:
There is a huge - and I mean HUGE - gap of understanding between the shepherd and the sheep.
I know some people say that sheep are pretty dumb, but quite apart from that, a sheep and a human being can never hope to have a "meeting of the minds". The sheep probably doesn't understand even half of what the shepherd is saying. The shepherd will never be able to fully communicate his heart, his thoughts, his reasoning or his intentions to the sheep, because even if he tried, the sheep simply would never be able to grasp it.
So here we have an unbridgeable gulf. Yet the shepherd tends to the sheep and cares for them, protecting them, communicating with them as much as he is able, in ways that they can understand.
And the sheep trust the shepherd. Probably pretty blindly, too.
All of a sudden I'm getting a better picture of the analogy: God is as removed and different from us as the shepherd is from the sheep. He lives on a completely different plane.
Likewise, there is an unbridgeable gulf of understanding between us and God. We can't ever hope to understand God fully, simply because He's so far above us. He would never be able to fully communicate His heart or His thoughts - or even His reasoning or His intentions - to us, because even if He tried, we just wouldn't be able to get it!
Yet He still cares for us and tries to communicate with us in ways we will grasp and understand. And He asks that we trust in Him and follow Him even if we don't fully know what He's doing or where He's leading us.
God's relationship with us is exactly like a shepherd's relationship with the sheep. Traditionally we talk about the shepherd caring for his flock, but I'd never seen it in this light before: the intellectual gulf, the gulf of knowledge and communication between the shepherd and the sheep is quite similar to that which is between God and I.
Trust isn't an easy word, though. Especially when it involves not knowing. Baa baa!