SCRIPTURE: John 10:25-30 MSG Jesus answered, “I told you, but you don’t believe. Everything I have done has been authorized by my Father, actions that speak louder than words. You don’t believe because you’re not my sheep. My sheep recognize my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them real and eternal life. They are protected from the Destroyer for good. No one can steal them from out of my hand. The Father who put them under my care is so much greater than the Destroyer and Thief. No one could ever get them away from him. I and the Father are one heart and mind.”
THOUGHT: If you’ve ever hungered to know God better, to understand God more deeply, to love God more completely, take some time in the gospels. Four different writers, four interwoven pictures of this man who claimed to be one heart and mind with God, the fourth of which ends with these poignant words: “And I suppose that if all the other events in Jesus’ life were written, the whole world could hardly contain the books (Jn. 21:25).”
We don’t know everything, but we do know that Jesus, over and over, says he is a picture of the Father – and the Father loves and protects us from the Destroyer as does his son. We can’t be stolen; we can’t be tricked by other voices that call out to us; no one can wrestle us away from this God who calls us his own. Not today. Not ever. This is one gift of Easter.
PRAYER: Jesus, when I look at you, when I listen to you, when I hear the stories you tell, I see a Father who loves and longs to be loved; who speaks truth and longs for truth from us. I see you, Jesus, painting a picture with your words and actions and stories of a God we cannot see (yet), but we can trust, and whose heart and mind we can know because of you.
Amy released a full-length book in early 2021, Walking When You’d Rather Fly: Meditations on Faith After the Fall. Maybe you’d like to check it out here.
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