Guest Post: My good shepherd continuously finds ways to feed me.
Guest post by Stephanie Sam Hirtle
Stephanie is a stay-at-home-mom of four children and writing is her outlet for creativity, spiritual growth, and processing trauma. She graduated from BYU in American Studies and Business Management.
This talk was originally delivered in Sacrament Meeting on Christmas Eve in December 2023 at the author’s home ward in Medford, Oregon.
Her uplifting message was met with a baffling response: a cruel letter in her mailbox from an anonymous ward member.
We anticipate that her voice will find a more receptive audience here at Exponent II!
One of our beloved hymns, Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd, rings the chorus:
Out in the desert they wander, hungry and helpless and cold; off to the rescue he hastens, bringing them back to the fold.
Who is that who is wandering, hungry, helpless and cold? It is his lambs. And we are the lambs. We are who wander. We are who hunger. We are who are helpless. And we are who are cold.
Who is He that hastens? It is the dear heart of the good Shepherd or Christ, our Savior and Healer, who rescues us, feeds us, helps us, and warms us.
I have wandered. As a teenager, I made some choices that alienated me from feeling the spirit. And as an adult, I took a detour in my journey in faith, questioning doctrinal truths I believed in my whole life. Both left me to wander. But Christ was there to rescue me—as He does with all his lambs. Not only is he a good shepherd but he is the Good Shepherd—meaning he will unhesitatingly leave the 99 to rescue the one. He will never abandon his lambs like a mere hireling who was employed to temporarily take care of the sheep.
He rescued me by guiding me to serve a mission, which spiritually saved me at that stage of my life. And he later led me through a faith transformation that matured my spirituality to come to know a God that my former immature spirit could never have recognized. And because of that faith transformation, I have been able to help others find a way to stay in the flock—even when that open gate seems like the only way out because they have felt marginalized and even alone.
I have hungered. He has led me to great spiritual teachers like my high school seminary teacher who miraculously made early morning seminary enjoyable and my BYU professor of Book of Mormon who taught me to truly delve into the scriptures like never before. He blessed me with a great love of learning the scriptures as a missionary which quickly became the favorite part of my day. I have come to love teaching gospel doctrine or speaking in church. Writing has become a way for me to discover insights about the gospel and share those with others. Reading books and listening to podcasts, in addition to studying the scriptures, have become a great source of joy and a lifeline for me to continually expand my gospel knowledge. My good shepherd continuously finds ways to feed me.
He has been there to help me when I felt completely helpless. One trial that has plagued me many years has left me not only feeling helpless but hopeless. Have you ever been in a cave when there is no light? It can be so dark that you can’t even see your hand. The darkness can be suffocating. But then someone turns on a flashlight. It could be a very small, insignificant source of light. But it penetrates that darkness like a million stars in the sky. When I find myself in that all encompassing darkness, I look for that tiny light—and it’s usually only found as I feel the hook of the good shepherd’s crook cradling me in. No matter how dark my life is, his light can be found. Even when my eyes are closed to it. The hook cradles me in and opens my eyes to the light. When we are in our darkest times, feel for that hook cradling you in. He will open your eyes to the light—even just be it a bare glimmer.
When I arrived in Scotland in October 1993 as a brand-new missionary, I was so cold. It didn’t seem to matter how many layers I wore, I was always cold. To this day, I can’t stand to be cold. It reminds me too much of how cold I was at times—especially in some of the less insulated flats we lived in. The best was when we were invited into someone’s home—I think honestly some people just felt sorry for us. We would sit in front of the fireplace and experience external warmth but also internal warmth as we shared the fire of the spirit of our testimonies. His light and truth warmed me and those I taught.
As a little girl, I experienced emotional coldness. I didn’t know how to find warmth then. But then later as an adult, my therapist took me through a powerful exercise. She asked me to remember those times of coldness and imagine myself now as an adult, going back to comfort that cold little girl. What would I say to that little girl that experienced cruelty? How could I warm her? It was a powerful, healing experience that years later at last brought warmth.
Our Savior is our healer. He brings us warmth when we are cold. Just like the shepherd protects his lambs from the elements that can freeze them, our shepherd protects us. He can soften our frozen hearts. He can warm our aching souls. He can calm the chill of worry and anxiety that shudder us.
Elder Gerrit W. Gong stated:
Our Good Shepherd rejoices when we exercise individual moral agency with intention and faith. Those in His fold look to our Savior in gratitude for His atoning sacrifice. We covenant to follow Him, not passively, blindly, or “sheepishly,” but instead desiring with all our hearts and minds to love God and our neighbor, bearing one another’s burdens and rejoicing in one another’s joys.
He continued:
A dear friend shared with me how she gained her precious testimony of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. She grew up believing sin always brought great punishment, borne by us alone. She pleaded to God to understand the possibility of divine forgiveness. She prayed to understand and know how Jesus Christ can forgive those who repent, how mercy can satisfy justice.
One day her prayer was answered in a spiritually transforming experience. A desperate young man came running out of a grocery store carrying two bags of stolen food. He ran into a busy street, chased by the store manager, who caught him and began yelling and fighting. Instead of feeling judgment for the frightened young man as a thief, my friend was unexpectedly filled with great compassion for him. Without fear or concern for her own safety, she walked straight up to the two quarreling men. She found herself saying, “I will pay for the food. Please let him go. Please let me pay for the food.”
Prompted by the Holy Ghost and filled with a love she had never felt before, my friend said, “All I wanted to do was to help and save the young man.” My friend said she began to understand Jesus Christ and His Atonement—how and why with pure and perfect love Jesus Christ would willingly sacrifice to be her Savior and Redeemer, and why she wanted Him to be.
In verse 2 of Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd, we sing:
See, the Good Shepherd is seeking,
Seeking the lambs that are lost,
Bringing them in with rejoicing,
Saved at such infinite cost.
I testify that Christ feeds us, warms us, helps us and ultimately rescues us. May we feel the love of the His shepherd crook that draws us unto Him and show that same love as we draw others unto us. He is the good shepherd with the dear shepherd heart and we can all be like Him by shepherding those within our own flocks. We should never want for hunger, warmth, help or saving. And neither should anyone else. That is what His Atonement is all about and is the Christmas the Good Shepherd yearns for all of us. Merry Christmas.
