The Fourth Sunday of Easter

Collect for IV Easter 

Grant that 

when we hear 

his voice, 

we may 

know him 

who calls us 

each by name 

(This is the back story so it’s eminently skippable!) 

My commitment is to use the verse I am given as the verse on m blog. I got todays late yesterday after-noon as maybe the Evening Prayer verse after walking down to church and picking up todays bulletin. But when the time came, there was a different one (with the picture of the alter flowers for today.)  So I thought maybe I’d use it for this morning. I’d set it all up. But then as I read the second lesson at MP, (Mark 6: 30-44)  I came across Jesus saying "go away to a deserted place all by yourself and rest a while.” Which sounded like a good idea,  although I surely cannot go away! Maybe This was for me and I could go ahead and USE the other on the blog… I even wrote it down. But I read on. And laughed because, although it sounded like a stellar idea to them too,  it didn’t work out for the disciples either - the crowds saw them going in the boat and got to the vaunted deserted place before they did and were there clambering for them even as they got to shore! The response? Exasperation, and frustration? Anger?  No. "Jesus had compassion on them for they were like sheep without a shepherd…” And I began to get the joke, it being “Good Shepherd Sunday.” To top it all off, when the disciples suggest to Jesus that he send the people away so they could get something to eat, Jesus' rely was  "YOU FEED THEM!”  "US?!  WE were wiped out even before ewe got here. We didn't bring anything along - how could we have known that...“  “What have you got?”” Jesus asked them. “PRECIOUS LITTLE!” they said.

And the rest, as they say, is history... Which wrap-ped me around nicely to my verse, our verse, for today: 

Happy Good Shepherd Sunday!  Grant that when we hear his voice, we may know him…