Sunday Drive: The Good Shepherd

Just sharing a picture and a verse that have a lot to do with my concept of the ultimate goodness at the heart of the universe:  mercy, compassion, self-sacrifice, the most tender love.  Bigger than the Church.  Bigger than the Bible.  Much bigger than anyone can imagine.  And yet so small and so simple in action.

If you go seeking it on the mountaintops or amid the starry depths of the heavens, you will never find it. Yet it is closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet. Something within you. The ground of all our being.

Love is its name. Seek within your heart, and ye shall find.

I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and I'm known by my own; even as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep, which are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice. They will become one flock with one shepherd. 

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:  and I give them eternal life; and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.

The Gospel of St. John, chapter 10