The Wolf and I

“Would you stop a bullet for me?

The conversation had been about the practical implications of egoism - “if I’m on my way to a doctor’s appointment, and in an alley there’s a man that’s been attacked a gang? He is bleeding and he's really, really big and there’s really nothing I can do to help but phone an ambulance…if I walk away, what am I? Am I really going to walk away because my doctor’s appointment matters more?” We had just about exhausted all of the reasons why a person might help or not and what that person might get out of helping or not.

For a brief moment we had discussed whether Martin Luther King could have been an egoist, acting on his own long term personal benefit. We moved on to talk about altruism.

And then the question, launched at me by some small fellow on the edge of the crowd. Would I stop a bullet for him?

Some might say that I gave my answer too swiftly.

“Yes.”

I must have said it in the right tone as no one questioned that I would. It was an answer that bypassed the brain and came straight from the heart. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know many of the people, or that some of the ones that I knew I really didn’t like that much, the answer was “Yes.” Ask me the same question next week, next month or next year and one would hope the answer would still be “Yes”

“Is that because your religion demands that you stop the bullet, or because you choose to?”

I had been reading John 10 over the week, in little snippets and single verses, meditating and chewing over stuff. I’d got to the verse about the hired man who doesn’t own the sheep. They don’t belong to him so when the wolf comes he just runs away and the sheep are scattered. I had been doing a lot of thinking about hired men and wolves – more about the wolves if truth be told. I thought about the times when I felt that I had been left to face the wolf alone – and sometimes circumstances really look like that. There doesn’t seem to be an obvious anyone between me and the wolf.

The Wolf and I

Who stands between the wolf and I?
On whose support can I rely?
The hired help? He runs away
Where is the man prepared to stay?

Some time previously I had been thinking about Jesus, the good shepherd laying down his life for his sheep. It was not a select few that Jesus died for, the nice fluffy ones, the ones that didn’t look for the holes in the fence or the ones that never got lost. All of them were infinitely precious to Him. All of them mattered because they were His.

I might not have seen the shepherd standing between the wolf and I, but He was there, not watching from a safe distance, but there with the stone in the sling and the sling swinging over his head.

God has given me s shepherd’s responsibility – not a laying on of hands commissioning in a church setting, but in daily life. I am supposed to be on the lookout. I encounter people who feel that it’s just them and the wolf and the hired hand running out of sight.

He calls me to step between a man and his wolf, or between a man and a bullet.

Shacks and Shedding Light in Dark Places

I think I ended a previous post with the wish that I could give some answers to give some people breakthrough in darkness they were walking through. I just might have some “magic words”.

They are not my words. They are not words lifted from the Bible either. They come in the form of a book I bought last week “The Shack”


The blurb on the back sets the scene. A man has experienced the loss of his youngest daughter. Evidence points to her having been brutally murdered. He is left with a Great Sadness that seems to cover him like a heavy blanket over his shoulders. Four years on he gets a message from God to meet him at the shack where the murder occurred.

He chooses to take up the encounter not really sure whether it is a cruel joke or what. Does he really encounter God there or does he just fall asleep and dream it all?

“Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?” That’s the big question that the book attempts to answer. Mack gets to ask the questions we would all like to ask if we were face to face with God. He gets to say the things we want to say, but we are sometimes too polite to say them, or too scared. He gets to shout at God. He gets to experience God’s tenderness, His tears, His smiles, His sadness and to hear God’s side of the argument.

The book digs holes in my preconceptions and makes me look again at what I think about God, about the world, about me and my part in it, about suffering, about answers and about how little I really know about anything.

There were things, truths explained, I already knew, but hadn't really allowed to filter down into my heart, and then through to my feet to be walked through daily. Being an RE teacher, the philosophy of religion comes as part of the degree. The book showed that it's not supposed to be mind-boggling, and largely irrelevant theory but life giving, Spirit breathing truth.

I did what I always do when I have got a good book to read. I spent the next few hours reading it. The washing up didn’t get done, or the ironing and I didn’t talk to anyone until I finished. This is not the way to read “The Shack”. One should read it slowly soaking in the words, taking the time to digest the words and think about them. There is a lot to chew on.

So I will read it through again - slowly.