4th Sunday of Easter 21 April 2024 Safety
The recent events in Sydney (stabbing attacks on shoppers, and on Orthodox bishop) remind us of our mortality and vulnerability.
We are not totally safe anywhere. We knew that anyway but these things remind us, and that is good insofar as we then look for ways of making ourselves ‘safer’.
We call Jesus Christ the Saviour, the one who makes us safe.
We can uncover different types of safety and how He can work that for us.
There is physical safety. We have probably all had many close shaves with death or injury. Some of these we would be aware of, others unknown to us because out of our sight or hearing etc.
We believe we have guardian angels who help with these matters. We thank God for whatever He has brought us through.
Physical safety is a good thing to have but cannot be totally guaranteed, as we live in a world which does not obey the commands of the Creator, so things often go wrong.
There is also the point that we must all experience physical death at some point, so it is impossible to be delivered from death forever.
Then there is spiritual safety, whereby we are delivered from the sins which weigh down on our souls, and impede the grace of God from guiding our lives. We see that people can get their lives into a terrible tangle with various vices, sins, lack of hope, alienation etc.
We can be delivered from all that if we bring ourselves to the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.
He saves us from ourselves, we might say. as we are likely to do all sorts of weird things, but He gives us a better way.
In the physical world we are careful crossing the street; so we can be in the spiritual world, we are careful what decision we make, and we live longer as a result.
The decisions amount to always obeying God, always complying with His holy will, and the rest falls into place.
Come to me you who labour and are overburdened. And I will give you rest.(Mt 11,28-30).
The shepherd gives rest to the sheep. We are safe with Him. If we can imagine ourselves in green pastures with the Lord, then the same peace extends to the way we live our lives. We avoid sin like we would avoid the wolf coming to eat us.
Then there is the state of our surrounding society, so far from the kingdom of God. The society represents danger to us in that it can lead us astray from the Sheepfold, lead us into chaotic places which will yield us death if we do not set ourselves right.
The Good Shepherd can heal the surrounding society too, only that is a much more complex matter.
We have so many twisted values at present that would take a lot of straightening out.
The Saviour saves as many as He can from the chaos, and in the process we should see some improvements in our surrounding world.
We draw comfort from the Good Shepherd; we pray to him at every level, for physical safety, for moral safety in helping us to choose wisely; for repairing the whole society in which we live, at least some way.
Safety comes with an enlightened response from us, as we learn how it all works and can work in the future.
We will be safer in all these ways if we let God operate, and especially if we ask Him.
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