God is no captious sophister eager to trip us up whenever we say amiss, but a courteous tutor ready to amend what, in our weakness or our ignorance, we say ill, and to make the most of what we say aright.

— Richard Hooker, Anglican priest, March 1554 – 3 November 1600

The Book of Genesis wherein Jacob’s story is told begins with the refrain “And it was evening and it was morning, the first day… . And it was evening and it was morning, the second day… .” and so on the refrain continues in what was for your Creator a pretty good week of work. That refrain is peculiar, and characteristic of the Bible: it means to make us question how we normally think. We think a day begins with the morning and ends with the evening.

God does his best work at night. And here we have this story of Jacob, this beautiful and astonishing dream he’s given in his sleep, the angels descending and ascending and the promise given to him who deserved it not at all, “I will be with you wherever you go.” In the middle of the night fifteen years ago my wife woke and rolled over to hear our daughter Gillian who was as fast asleep as Jacob was. We would tuck the Gillian girl into her bed at night and usually she would end up in ours. Victoria rolled over to hear Gillian, sound asleep, singing “Kum ba ya ma da” as if she were frisking with fairies.

George MacDonald, a great writer greatly neglected, wrote, “I believe that if there be a living conscious love at the heart of the universe, the mind in the quiescence of its consciousness in sleep, comes into a less disturbed contact with the heart of the creation. The cessation of labor affords but the necessary occasion, makes it possible as it were for the occupant of an outlying station in the wilderness to return to its Father’s house for fresh supplies.”

My fingers took a walk in the yellow pages. Sheds. Sheet Metal Working Equip. & Supls. Shelving … Ship Brokers. No Shepherds. Not surprising.

We used to live in Seekonk, Massachusetts. Across the street from our house there lived a family who kept all manner of things, nearly all of them broken down and rusting. Among the derelict air conditioners, wringer washers, tractors and bedsprings, they kept animals. Horses. Peacocks. Llamas. Ducks. Sheep.

So when I think of shepherds, I think of Richard and how he kept his sheep. He would feed them out of a baby bottle when they were newborn lambs. He would wade through snow up to his knees with bales of hay in each of his hands to feed them on bitter cold winter evenings in the barn. He would push aside the door, walk into the dark and turn on the light. He would shake out the hay and the dust would fly around in that incandescence. And there they were, his sheep, their foolish greedy comic faces lit like darlings.

Like sheep we get hungry, and hungry for more than just food. We get thirsty for more than just drink. Our souls hunger and thirst, and it is that hunger and thirst that makes us know that we have souls in the first place. That is part of what Psalm 23 means in saying that the Lord is our shepherd. It means that like a shepherd, He feeds us. He feeds that part of us which is hungriest and most in need of feeding.

Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to “Our Father Below”, writing to his understudy Wormwood, elaborates on the Enemy’s intentions:

Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs — to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best … 

He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

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from C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgins name was Mary.
And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.
And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible.
And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.