Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 199 · July 18
Moved With Compassion
“But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.”
There is a face you pass on the same street twice a day, and you have reasons for not looking at it. Some of them are good reasons. You gave last month. You do not carry cash.
The word Matthew uses for what happened to Jesus when he saw a crowd is a body word. Splagchna are the inward organs, where that world located feeling. The verb is rare: in the Gospels it describes Jesus, and otherwise only three men in three parables, each of whom stands in for God. The father who saw his son yet a great way off. The Samaritan on the road. The king who forgave the servant the debt.
What set it off is specified. Because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. The phrase has a history. Moses asked God for a successor so that the congregation of the LORD be not as sheep which have no shepherd, and Micaiah told a king I saw all Israel scattered upon the hills, as sheep that have not a shepherd. Both times shepherds existed and were not doing it. Jesus looks at a crowd with a full religious establishment over it and sees animals with nobody in charge.
One instruction is attached to the feeling, and it is small enough to do before you leave the house. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest. Pray that about the face on your street. Then read the first verse of the next chapter, where he sends out the twelve who had just prayed it, and be ready.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 199 is Rejoice and Shout for Joy (Psalm 5:11).