He Goes Before
“When I lead my sheep out, I go before them” (John 10:4).
A few years ago Carolyn and I were making our way up a winding mountain road into the Sawtooths when we came across a large band of sheep moving down the road toward us. A lone shepherd with his dogs was in the vanguard, leading his flock out of summer pasture into the lowlands and warmer winter quarters.
We pulled to the side of the road and waited while the flock swirled around us, and watched until it passed out of view.
Sheep are the embodiment of all that is feeble and helpless. I wondered: “Do they fear change, movement, new places?”
Like most old folks, I like the “fold”—the familiar circumstances and surroundings. Like the aging Hobbit, Bilbo, I like continuity, “I miss my meal at noon.”
But all is shifting and changing around me; Carolyn and I are being led out, away from familiar surroundings and into a vast unknown. This a “novel” virus, they say. No one has been this way before.
I wonder: What new limits will overtake us? What nameless fears will awaken? Jesus’ words come to mind: “When I lead my sheep out, I go before them (John 10:4).
I may well be dismayed at what life holds for us this year and next and the next, but the Good Shepherd knows the way.
He will go before us, picking the way. He will not lead us down paths too steep for us to negotiate; He knows our limitations and will strike a leisurely pace. He knows the way to green pastures and still water; all we have to do is follow.
Thus I need not fear tomorrow, or take on its obligations, for tomorrow will take care of itself. God knows all the trouble that lies before me. It “must pass through Him before it gets to me” (F. B. Meyer)..
Doubt has cast its weird, unwelcome shadows o’er me
Thoughts that life’s best and choicest things are o’er.
What but His word can strengthen and restore me.
And this blest fact: that still He goes before.
—J. Danson Smith
David Roper
