Who Are You Running From?

Do any of you remember the movie The Fugitive, with Harrison Ford? I saw it again just recently. He does a fantastic job of showing the stress of being hunted. One twitch in a cheek muscle and boom! you're right there with him, forgetting to breathe, the adrenalin shooting through your system, your heart racing, your mouth dry... It’s pretty exciting, isn't it? But only because it's happening to someone else. Really being hunted is no fun at all. Have you ever had a dream of being chased, running running running down a tunnel with some faceless enemy on your heels, and wakened up with your heart racing, unable to go back to sleep again? Or even worse: have you ever found yourself caught in a place you ought not to be at night, with dark alleys to pass holding who knows what? Every footstep, every shadow might be your enemy. Did that shadow move? Are the footsteps gaining on you? I've been mugged - twice - and I know that shadows can hold things that are going to jump out at you.

When my middle godson was three, I got him a book about Jesus' parable of the lost sheep, told from the point of view of the lamb who had strayed. It's a perfectly delightful retelling of the tale, meant to illustrate in a personal way what it's like to be found by the shepherd and taken home. But my godson didn't like it. He didn't like stories about being lost. And so I've been thinking, a bit, about that lost lamb. Did he hear a wolf in every whisper in the grass? Did every breath of wind become a hawk swooping down to pluck out his eyes? Somehow I don't believe that the lamb came scurrying thankfully back to the shepherd's side the minute he heard footsteps. I'll bet that lamb's heart was beating so hard he couldn't hear anything else, that he had his eyes tight shut and was doing his best to look like a bush or a rock or something.

And another thing about sheep. I didn't think shepherds kept dogs in Bible times; at least, they're never part of the shepherd metaphors. But apparently some did, because they're mentioned in Job. Have you ever seen sheepdog trials? I've never seen them in real life, but I've seen a few on TV. Those dogs are good. You know how they work? They run around the outside of the flock, usually on the side away from where the shepherd is, barking at sheep who look like they might try heading off in the wrong direction, even nipping at their flanks and heels if they get really stubborn about going their own way.

I bet those sheep think the dogs are just another kind of predator. I'll bet those sheep don't consider the dogs to be their friends.

So I've been thinking about people, and about sheep, and about how easy it is to drift out of God's purposes and into our own. How extraordinarily reassuring it is to know that God doesn't let me wander out of his keeping any more now that I am a Christian - and ought to know better - than he did when I had no idea of what it meant to be under his care. God uses all of creation to steer us back in his direction, just as the shepherd uses his dogs. I've been amusing myself with the fancy that two of God's sheepdogs are named Hesed and Tov, the Hebrew words for goodness and mercy. "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." It's not a perfect metaphor, of course, because I do not believe and do not intend to imply that God plans disasters for us in order to punish us from straying and to force us back into obedience, even though it does sometimes work out that way. On the contrary: we can count on God to protect us from real danger even better than sheepdogs protect their flock from real wolves.

Because it is tov - goodness - and hesed - mercy - that protect us. Tov is every kind of goodness that there is, except the pinched self-righteousness that sometimes tries to pass itself off as goodness. The goodness of God is a lavish, abundant sort of goodness that doesn't cut corners when no one will be looking. It covers everything from a fresh-baked loaf of bread to a Bach cantata, from a starlit night to a ship under sail, from courage to compassion to creativity. James the brother of Jesus captured it well when he said

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of ...lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. [Jas 1:17]