Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Jesus the Good Shepherd
Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him and the sheep hear his voice. He call his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers. Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
So again Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves and runs away - and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care fore the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. Just as the Father knows me and I know the father. And I lay down my life for the sheep."
John 10:1-15
"Silence is the simple stillness of the individual under the Word of God. We are silent before hearing the Word because our thoughts are already directed to the Word, as a child is quiet when he enters his father's room. We are silent after hearing the Word because the Word is still speaking and dwelling within us. We are silent at the beginning of the day because God should have the first word, and we are silent before going to sleep because the last word also belongs to God. We keep silent solely for the sake of the Word, and therefore not in order to show disregard for the Word but rather to honour and receive it."
From Life Together by Dietrich Bonheoffer
Today was pretty good with the no talking. Yeah I was a bit on the melo side of things but it went ok. I was able to communicate what I wanted for the most part and I still enjoyed my day. Though I am really looking forward to talking again! J
It has been weird this week. At times I’ve thought about things coming in the future and then my mind has taken me to the idea of oh how am I going to say that when I can’t talk… but then I realise that oh right I am only doing this for a week. Thursday midnight I can talk again. Haha
I wasn't really in the mood to write that night, I was tired and wanted to go to bed (but don't worry, I make up for it tomorrow….). Although I do remember that I had my small group last night. It was nearing the end of the year, we'd been meeting every other week this semester (and every week first semester) so it'd been a good chunk of time together. So that night we spent some time reflecting on each other, how we've seen each other grow, what we see in each other, and other great stuff like that. Since I couldn't talk, I was nominated as the scribe, I had a piece of paper for each person and I wrote down what the others were saying. At the end of the night we all stood up in a circle and held hands to pray for one another. Somehow we'd missed Jen :( I was aware of this so before we ended I started a prayer like this "God, please forgive me for talking but we seemed to have missed Jen tonight…" and ended it "….ok I am going to stop talking now…" I decided that this was an ok time to talk… :P
Only one more day left, at this point I was living in great anticipation!
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