I Give Them Eternal Life

Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter

By Melanie Rigney

For a whole year they met with the Church and taught a large number of people, and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.  (Acts 11:26)

All you nations, praise the Lord. (Psalm 117:1a)

“My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand.” (John 10:27-28)

Piety

Lord, I ask for the humility and faith to follow where You lead.

Study

“No one can take them out of my hand.”

Jesus makes it all sound so easy: he leads, we follow. He gives eternal life; we accept it.

Except, of course, that it’s not that easy.

He leads us to places we may not want to go, places of beauty and prestige and honor for which we feel woefully unqualified and inadequate. He leads us to other places we may not want to go as well, places of pain and misery and persecution that we believe we cannot bear.

And yet, as Christians, we know what we must do.

Follow.

Follow wherever He leads, to the sweet places and the sour, to the joyful places and the sorrowful.

We like to talk about our faith journey, where we’ve been and where we are today. But where we’re going? No matter how much we think we control our destinies, we know in our souls that if we are true Christians, we control very little, other than conducting our lives in as Christlike a manner as we can… and turning away from the temptations that beckon us elsewhere.

He leads. We follow.

It’s as simple and as challenging as that.

Action

Approach your day as an opportunity to play follow the leader with Jesus rather than forging out on your own. Tonight, reflect; where was your day easier for this mindset?