Imagine you’re making your way through a dense and forbidding forest, teeming with hungry wolves, and you find an innocent lamb grazing in a small clearing. Surrounded by predators and right near the bottom of the food chain, the lamb is a quivering mess. It cowers when a light breeze rustles the grass, and it nearly jumps out of its skin when a flock of birds suddenly take off from a nearby tree.
What can you do to help this neurotic sheep? Perhaps you can teach it the difference between the sound of an approaching wolf and other forest sounds. You could also teach it about its surroundings, so birds and other harmless creatures aren’t so unexpected. With your help, the little lamb might learn to overcome its fears, but it will never really be tranquil. That is because, for the most part, its fears are not irrational. It is defenseless prey in a predator’s world. That’s the reality.
But what if it’s not? What if, in fact, the lamb was brought to that clearing and is being closely guarded by a well-equipped Shepherd? If you could show that to the little lamb, it would change its entire perception of reality. It would finally experience true tranquility.
We are that lamb. Life’s challenges seem to consume us at times. There are many helpful tools that can and should be used to help us work through and overcome the pain, anxieties, traumas, and negativity.
But we can’t stop there.
A life of true inner peace is a life lived with the Master Shepherd at our side; striving to know and feel that it is HaShem who has lovingly carried us to this place and does not leave our side for a split second.
The winds may howl and the lions may growl all around us. But we are safe and secure in that little clearing; our Heavenly Father is right there guarding and protecting.
(Based on an excerpt by S.M. Rubashkin in Ami Magazine)