if the earth...a poem by Joe Miller

If the earth

were only a few feet in 

diameter, floating a few feet above a

field somewhere, people would come from

every where to marvel at it. People would walk

around it marveling at its big pools of water, its little

pools and the water flowing between the pools. People

would marvel at the bumps on it, and the holes in it, and they

would marvel at the very thin layer of gas surrounding it and the

water suspended in the gas. The people would marvel at all the

creatures walking around the surface of the ball, and in the water.

The people would declare it precious because it was the only one,

And they would protect it, so that it would not be hurt. The ball

would be the greatest wonder known, and people would come

to behold it, to be healed, to gain knowledge, and to know

beauty and to wonder how it could be. People would love

it, and defend it with their lives, because they would

somehow know that their lives, their own

roundness, could be nothing without it.

If the earth were only a few

feet in diameter.---Joe Miller.

vulnerability and protection: The biblical image of the Good Shepherd

 The biblical image of the shepherd, though not a common contemporary reference point for us, still speaks to the faithful in meaningful ways.  The 23^rd psalm and the images of Jesus the shepherd are most often associated with death, with funerals.   The image and the Psalm bring comfort to those who mourn.  Shepherd images for God were long part of the story of Israel.  Some 500 years before Jesus, Ezekiel the prophet spoke of God as a shepherd when he said:

 “For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. ¹²As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. ¹³I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. ¹⁴I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. ¹⁵I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. ¹⁶I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.” Ezekiel 34.