Daily Manna · Day 256 · September 13
The Gentle Shepherd
“He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.”
Most of us are not gentle with people who are slow. We are least gentle of all when the slow one is ourselves.
Now look at the chapter this verse sits in, because it shows God at His greatest. Just before our verse, Isaiah says that "his arm shall rule for him." Just after it, he says that God has "measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span," measuring the whole sky with His spread hand. To Him "the nations are as a drop of a bucket," and "he taketh up the isles as a very little thing." He brings the princes to nothing and makes the judges of the earth as empty as air.
Between those pictures of power stands verse eleven, and that same arm gathers the lambs. "He shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom," which means close against His chest. He also "shall gently lead those that are with young," the mother sheep with newborn lambs at their side. A shepherd who does that sets the pace of the whole flock by the one animal that can least afford to hurry.
So the chapter wants you to see that it is one arm. The arm that measures the sea is the same arm that slows down for a ewe with a newborn lamb. God does not switch between two moods, strong on some days and soft on others. His gentleness is simply how His strong arm behaves. If you are the slow one in the flock today, He has already set the pace with you in mind, and He will not leave you behind.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 256 is A Great Way Off (Luke 15:20).