It’s hard to hold anything together over the long haul. If for no other reason than it’s our human tendency to break up. To divide. To disagree. To rub each other the wrong way. To find it easier to go our own way.
And on the whole, this isn’t just because humans are rotten, but because life is challenging. Life is hard. Adversity comes. Seemingly insurmountable challenges come. We end up facing things we have no idea how to face. There are questions posed to us to which there are no simple answers.
This is true in marriage. In friendship. In neighborhoods. In politics. In church. In any context in which more than one person is involved.
Which is why it’s good news that Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd. He protected his disciples. He held them together. He made them one. And then, when he knew he would have to leave them—and because of the high likelihood that they would break up when the glue holding them together was gone—he prayed for them:
“Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me.”
This is the prayer of a compassionate Shepherd who has committed himself to caring for his sheep, and is now concerned about leaving them vulnerable and fragile out in the wildlands of the world. I can’t help but think that Jesus is still praying this prayer over his people. Over all people. Over all of our countless points of relational fragility.
