Growing up in the suburbs, I’ve never been an outdoorsy girl. I’ve always appreciated sitting in the air conditioning reading a good book or perusing the stores of a shopping center rather than going on a camping trip in the dead of summer or hiking for miles and miles on end. Now, don’t get me wrong. I very much enjoy nature and love to take pictures of stunning sunsets, majestic mountains, and other gorgeous scenery. But if I were given a choice between spending time indoors or outdoors, I’d likely choose the former.
This is probably true for many of us living in the western world. Since the Industrial Revolution, our society is seeing fewer and fewer people working in the outdoors—farming and agriculture—and more and more working nine to five in some office building crunching numbers and running reports under the harsh, florescent glow of artificial light.
However, the culture of ancient Israel was quite different from ours. They had a far more agricultural society, and many Israelites had to work the land and raise livestock just to survive and put food on the table. Because agriculture played such a huge role in their lives, many of Jesus’ parables and teachings in first century Israel were centered around farming. The Jews living in the time of Christ would have had no issues understanding his agrarian examples, but because we are so far removed from farming life, we often struggle to understand what Jesus means.
In His fourth I Am statement, which is found in John 10, Jesus describes Himself as “the Good Shepherd.” If you’re anything like me, you may have no clue what it looks like to be a shepherd in today’s day and age, let alone two thousand years ago. So, what is Jesus saying when He claims, “I Am the Good Shepherd”?
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