Numbers! Our lives are filled with numbers. Each year we file our income taxes.

Now that’s an exercise in numbers to end all numbers games. Pages upon pages of numbers: earned numbers, spent numbers, invested numbers, and saved numbers. When it is finally prepared, we send it off to the Internal Revenue Service with our Social Security number on it. And the IRS takes all those numbers and puts them into a computer, along with the numbers of millions of other people. And to them, we become a number.

The government knows us by our tax number. The state knows us by our driver’s license number. The bank knows us by our account number. And when we retire, we’ll be remembered by our Social Security number. And it goes on and on. In fact, sometimes I wonder if anybody knows us at all without a number!

How very different it is with God! God knows us intimately, in fact, better than we know ourselves. And that’s important to remember. In spite of the fact that the image of sheep and shepherd is foreign to our experience, Jesus’ words in the  Gospel hearken for us a truth that our human hearts long to hear.

The Old Testament writer put it even more clearly when he wrote, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me, and I give them eternal life.”

Thanks to Lee Griess for sharing.

When was the last time that YOU felt like a number? Do YOU feel like YOU are just a number in YOUR relationship with the Lord?

LIFE IS TOO SHORT, THE WORLD IS TOO BIG, AND GOD’S LOVE IS TOO GREAT TO LIVE JUST AN ORDINARY LIFE!

Treats for the Soul PLUS.  Please give a listen to my PODCAST. I think you will enjoy my Commentary and Prayer Reflection on today’s message. Just click the white triangle in the blue circle above.