My Teacher

Hello, Little One. I’m pretty tense right now so I thought I would come and visit with you for a while.

You know, Little One, I can learn a lot from you. God refers to His people sometimes as sheep. Do you think that could mean that people have some sheep-like tendencies? It must be or He wouldn’t have made the comparison. So is it all right with you if I just stay here for a while and let you be my teacher?

Little One, what do you do when you’re scared? Do you ever get scared? I was going to say that you must get scared sometimes because you’re only human. But you’re not human. You’re a lamb. Anyway, what do you do when you’re scared? I would imagine that you run and get as close to your shepherd as possible. Am I right? Why is that? Why do you go and get as close to your shepherd as possible? Is it because you have learned that your shepherd loves you and will take care of you? You don’t worry about having your needs met because you’ve learned through experience that your shepherd will take care of your needs. It’s the result of your relationship with your shepherd.

Relationship. That’s a tough word for a lot of people. Some have been in a bad relationship. Some have been in a relationship that was good and then turned bad. Some can’t quite figure out what a relationship is because they lost an important one when they were young. That’s me. I lost an important relationship when I was pretty young and the relationship you have with your shepherd is tough for me to understand because of that. It’s almost like learning a language when you’re an adult. It’s a whole lot easier to learn a language when you’re a child. It’s a whole lot easier to learn how to function in a relationship like you have with your shepherd if you start learning it as a child.

Here comes Arnold! Hello, Arnold. How are you today? Little One and I have been talking about …well, we started talking about what he does when he’s scared and that led into relationships. Little One is being my teacher today. Would you be willing to be my teacher, too, for a while?

Arnold, I really don’t know if baby eagles ever get scared. I mean, you build your nest so high up, I wonder if anything could really be a threat to your babies?

What about when your babies are learning to fly? If their little wings don’t quite have the strength yet that they need to soar with you and their mama, do they get scared then?

I’m not a person who knows a lot about birds but I understand that when a baby eagle is in danger of falling out of the sky, it’s parent will swoop down under the baby so that the baby actually lands on its parent’s back. Then the parent carries the baby safely back to the nest.

Arnold, for you to do that, you have to be watching your babies all the time, right? You couldn’t know they were in danger if you weren’t.

Dear woman reading this post, I don’t need to belabor the point. You and I are like sheep. God says so. In one of the most famous passages in the Bible, Psalm 23, the writer says God is his Shepherd. Jesus calls Himself the Good Shepherd. That’s why I wanted to let Little One be my teacher today and see what I can learn from him about his relationship to his shepherd that I can apply to my relationship with Jesus Who is my Shepherd. Dear woman, let’s learn together.
Because he’s learned from having a relationship with his shepherd that his shepherd will always take care of him, he goes to his shepherd when he’s scared.

There’s that word, “relationship”, again. Ouch! A bad relationship or a severed one can really make it tough to understand how God can possibly be any different. I don’t have any magic formula to make it easier. All I can say is you need to take one tiny little baby step towards God and He will honor that as long as you do it with sincerity. After all, either He’s telling the truth or He isn’t when He says He wants to be your Shepherd and care for you.
It may very well hurt, a lot, and feel really dangerous but take that baby step towards Him today. You’ll find that, just like Arnold swoops down to catch his babies when they are falling and just like Little One’s shepherd always takes care of him and supplies for him, God will always do the same for His “sheep” and “baby eagles”.

Arnold, Little One, thanks for being my teacher today. I feel better now. I’m going to take some time tonight and draw near my Shepherd and let Him love and take care of me.

Good night.