Sheep-ish

There's something about the metaphor of Christ being the Good Shepherd that just gets me. I love imagining me, a little lamb, peeking out of His side satchel; His hands patting my head, His arms holding me close.

Today I taught a lesson in church. The title of the lesson was "Feed My Sheep." The counsel came from President Ezra Taft Benson, the prophet of the Church a while back. He challenged us to shepherd those around us--to guide them to Christ's fold, love them, care for them, and feed them spiritually (and physically, if need be). I thought then of this story from another Church leader, John R. Lasater, about his experience with a shepherd in Morocco:

That's why this metaphor is so cool: because its mortal counterpart is so exact! Real shepherds do love their sheep. Real shepherds do know their sheep by name. Real shepherds never give up on their sheep, no matter how old or injured or broken they may be. For the good shepherds, each lamb is precious and priceless.

And He would die for us. He did. So He asks the same dedication and charity from us, His under-shepherds. He asks three times over, and many times more: Feed my sheep. We must be willing to answer.

Clean-ish

It was Halloween, and even though I'm twenty, I wasn't going to miss out on a chance to dress up.

My roommates and I disguised ourselves as the three girl emotions from the movie Inside Out: I was Joy and they were Sadness and Disgust. We had a great time spray-painting our hair and spreading colored eyeshadow all over our faces, making sure to gob some sparklies into our hair for effect. We had a grand old time at our ward dance party (even though the people who had never seen the movie were confused about what we were). We got home late, but reveled in the knowledge that Daylight Savings would give us another hour of sleep before 8:30 church this morning.

With that thought in our heads, we set to work de-costumizing ourselves. I took some makeup remover to my face and smiled to see my regular skin color underneath that shimmery yellow. Next was the hair, though, and my bright blonde had gone to bright blue. It was a two-person, roughly four-wash job, with me curled over the bathtub as my roommate scrubbed the back locks and I scrubbed the front ones. At the end of the whole process, I felt fresh, happy, and clean.

Because my brain thinks in comparisons and symbols (I guess I've spent too much time in English classes), I thought this was perfect:

The bad choices we make? Well, that's the paint. It covers us up and decks us out; it might seem fun at first, but then we realize it's just a mess that needs to be cleaned up. We need help to do it, too. The Lord Jesus Christ is the One who comes to scrub sin from our lives. With Him at our side, it is easier. But it still might require multiple tries, it still might take a lot of work, it still might be discouraging and frustrating and hard and disappointing when you look in the mirror and there's still blue lingering in your cowlick...

But when you're all clean? Mmm...that feeling is worth four washes and more.