He Shall Stand and Feed

With the Shepherd

Micah writes this centuries before the shepherd he is describing was born in Bethlehem, and the picture he gives is both tender and strong at once. This shepherd stands, a posture of steadiness and permanence, and feeds his flock in the strength of the LORD, not in fragile human strength that eventually runs out or fails under pressure.

Notice the result promised: and they shall abide. The flock’s security is directly tied to the shepherd’s strength, not their own. Sheep are not asked here to become strong enough to secure their own abiding. They abide because the one feeding and leading them stands in a strength that does not falter.

This closes the first movement of this book on a note of confidence rather than sentimentality. Everything you have read this week, the searching, the intimate knowing, the willingness to lay down his life, the gentle leading of the weak, is not soft strength easily overwhelmed. It is strength rooted in the LORD himself, majestic and lasting.

You are not asked to abide by your own strength this week or any week after it. You are invited to abide under a shepherd whose strength has already been proven sufficient for every kind of sheep, in every kind of pasture, for as long as the flock has existed.