It’s so cold where I live. I’m glad it’s warm where Little One lives. Where is Little One? Oh, there he is, playing with some other lambs. We can chat when he gets tired and comes over to the shade here to rest.
Yesterday, Little One taught me about trusting my Shepherd to take care of me. I wonder what I can learn from him today. He’s sure having fun with his friends. He knows his shepherd is near so he feels safe. That’s one thing I can learn: I don’t need to be afraid when my Shepherd is near.
Little One and his friends must be tired now. They’re going to lie down in the shade and rest. Little One must not know I’m here to visit. I won’t disturb him. I’ll just watch and see what else I can learn from him.
Hmmm. He’s just staring at his shepherd. What’s that all about? It’s almost like he‘s studying his shepherd and trying to learn about him.
Dear woman reading this, what about you? What about me? Do we ever take the time to get quiet and study our Shepherd? Little One can see his shepherd with his physical eyes. We can’t do that. Jesus, our Shepherd, is no longer on earth in a physical body that we can see with our physical eyes. But that doesn’t mean we can’t study Him.
He has given us a book called the Bible. By studying that, we can “see” Jesus, our Shepherd, and learn what He is like. What’s more, we can know what our Shepherd thinks by reading the Bible. Little One can’t possibly know what his shepherd is thinking.
Does the Bible intimidate you? Do you think it’s so big and thick you could never read it all the way through? Do you think it’s a collection of fairy tales? Or maybe you don’t think about it at all? God says the Bible is true. He says He, Himself, is truth. Like we talked about in the last post, either He’s lying or He’s telling the truth. So let’s take another baby step and peek inside the Bible together.
If you’re looking at a print Bible and not one on a phone or some other electronic device, you can go to the front and find the table of contents. Look down through the list. Each of those names is called a “book”. Right at the beginning, you’ll find a book called “Genesis”. The word Genesis means “beginning” and the book of Genesis tells how everything began. Look down through the list. You’ll find 66 names or books on the list and they’re divided into two testaments, the Old Testament and the New Testament. You’ll find some weird names on the list. Names like Deuteronomy and Haggai. Don’t be turned off. There are reasons for the weird names.
Keep going down the list of books. Not quite two-thirds of the way down the list, you will come to the book of John. That’s where we want to start studying our Shepherd. Have you found it? Use the page numbers just like you would use any index. Don’t get confused here, John wrote five books and four of them are named after him. Be sure you’re looking at the Gospel of John and not first John. There it is. You got it!
Now you can see that John is divided into chapters like any book but it is also divided into verses. See how it works? Read just the first verse of the first chapter:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
I won’t torture you with long explanations here. Just trust me that in this verse, Jesus is the Word. Study that verse a minute. Just like Little One is studying his shepherd. What can we learn about our Shepherd? I don’t want to lecture. Read the verse over several times. See what you can learn. Maybe even go as far as to write down in a notebook what you learn. Little One can’t do that! Repeat the process with the next verse and so on!
Until we meet again, let’s be good sheep and study our Shepherd! Good bye!
Lambs and Wings 