He Watches Over His Flock

He Watches Over His Flock
By Henry Andrew Harper

“He shall feed his flock like a shepherd:
he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom,
and shall gently lead those that are with young.”
Isaiah 40:11
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There is a particular tenderness in the image of a shepherd watching over his flock, who knows every animal in his care—not as a collection, but as individuals, each one counted and beloved. This is the portrait Jesus deliberately chose in describing Himself. Isaiah prophesied of it centuries before: “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom.” When Christ fulfilled that promise, He did not do so from a distance. He walked the dusty roads. He noticed the one missing lamb.

Rev. Alexander Maclaren, reflecting on the relationship between each of us and this Good Shepherd, taught: “He knows me because He loves me; He knows me because He has sympathy with me, and I know Him, if I know Him at all, by my love, and I know Him by my sympathy, and I know Him by my communion. A loveless heart does not know the Shepherd, and unless the Shepherd’s heart was all love He would not know His sheep. The Shepherd’s love is an individualized love. He knows His flock as a flock because He knows the units of it, and we can rest ourselves upon the personal knowledge, which is personal love and sympathy, of Jesus Christ.”  This is no nominal care, no management of a crowd. The Good Shepherd holds each life separately in His attention. Rev. Maclaren taught further that we know Jesus “not by force of intellect…, but by having our hearts harmonized in Him, and our spirits put into sympathy and communion with Him.”  As C.S. Lewis explained, “You ask ‘for what’ God wants you. Isn’t the primary answer that He wants you. We’re not told that the lost sheep was sought out for anything except itself. Of course, He may have a special job for you: and the certain job is that of becoming more and more His.” 

And what does He do when one of His sheep is lost? In the words of Rev. Maclaren: “Oh! the patient, incredible inexhaustibleness of the divine love. God’s long-suffering, like a sleuth-hound, will follow the object of its search through all its windings and doublings, until it comes up to it… The further away we get the more tender His appeal; the more we stop our ears the louder the voice with which He calls.” This is because, as Dale G. Renlund reminds us, the Good Shepherd will never recoil from the wayward or the wounded: He “finds joy in seeing His diseased sheep progress toward healing.” The promise of His shepherding is, as Julian of Norwich put it nearly 700 years ago, “in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.” Henri Nouwen described the posture this invites in us: “The question is not ‘How am I to find God?’ but ‘How am I to let myself be found by Him?’” The sheep does not rescue itself. It is found. And the Shepherd, looking through that divine gaze, discovers joy at our coming home.

This Good Shepherd’s care did not end at the completion of His mortal ministry. He is still watching. He still calls. The rod and staff of Psalm 23 are still in His hands — not, as Maclaren put it, “coercing, not driving by violence, but leading to the fountains of the waters of life, gently and graciously.” Each of us can be assured of His great promise made to His sheep: you are known, you are cared for, you are watched over. And He will carry you home. 

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