My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.
The gift of faith and the leading of the Spirit enable us to recognize the voice of Jesus when he speaks to us. We recognize him by the unfathomable love with which he speaks and the enormity of the promise toward which he directs us. He himself is the one who will lead his sheep to lie down in the green pastures that are here revealed to be "eternal life", and is able to do this because he himself is the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep. If we hear echoes of Scriptures and of the Psalms when he speaks it is because they spoke about him. It was his own Spirit that inspired those authors who wrote them.
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
The voice of Jesus does not speak to us of an oversimplified and naive vision, does not present a health and wealth Gospel designed to assuage our every earthly sorrow immediately. He does not promise his followers that they will avoid persecution but that they will be protected in the midst of it, not that they will avoid the valley of the shadow of death, but that he will lead them through it.
No one can take them out of my hand.
Again, the promise of Jesus is not that tribulations will not occur. He assures us that they will, and that we should be realistic about this so that they do not unsettle us when they come. The promise was rather what Paul recognized it to be:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
(see Romans 8:35, 37)
It is a people who have indeed triumphed in the midst of such tribulations that is revealed to stand before the throne of the Lamb in heaven, worshipping day and night.
“These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress;
they have washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
It is "for this reason" that they stand before the throne, insofar as their own sufferings revealed in them the triumph of the Lamb in his own sufferings. They were now definitive proof of the power that kept them in the hand of Jesus even after the world, the flesh, and the Devil did all in their power to take them from his hand.
No one can take them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,
and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand.
The Father and I are one.
The Father and Jesus are united in their intention to keep their sheep safe. They are one in the power by which that intention cannot be thwarted, save by we ourselves, if we obstinately refuse to allow ourselves to be shepherded, if we insist on resisting the love that moves the sun and the other stars.
So they shook the dust from their feet in protest against them,
and went to Iconium.
The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.
Paul and Barnabas had a perspective that came from their own relationship with the Good Shepherd, the Lamb in the center of the throne. They recognized that the sufferings of the present were not worth comparing to the glory that would be revealed (see Romans 8:18). They had the assurance of the hope that the blessings of eternity would more than make up for anything they endured here below.
The one who sits on the throne will shelter them.
They will not hunger or thirst anymore,
nor will the sun or any heat strike them.
For the Lamb who is in the center of the throne
will shepherd them
and lead them to springs of life-giving water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Having their minds renewed with this heavenly perspective is part of what has made the saints so powerful in their ability to accomplish God's will. They do not avoid suffering as though it is something unexpected or unusual. They are able to persist in loving God and neighbor precisely because they have the end in view. They know that the power of the Lamb that protects us in the valleys of this life is the same power that will finally shelter us from every sorrow and wipe away every tear in eternity.
"From heaven even the most miserable life will look like one bad night at an inconvenient hotel."
- Saint Teresa of Avila
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