The challenge of distinguishing the voice of God from all the voices that vie for our attention is not unique to our time. Jesus used the metaphor of the shepherd to reassure his followers that they can recognize the voice of God from among the voices they hear. In Jesus’s time, the sheep that belonged to the members of a village or community would be penned together overnight. In the morning each shepherd would come to the gate of the enclosure. He would call his sheep and lead them out to pasture. The sheep could distinguish among the voices of all the shepherds, and they would follow the
...more
