Shepherds and stores

Jesus, help me remember who "owns the store!" Amen.

"I am the good shepherd," Jesus said. "A good shepherd will give up his life to save his sheep. A paid worker will let a wolf eat the sheep, because he doesn't own them. But I know my sheep and they know me, and I'll die for them. All people will hear my voice and become like one flock of sheep with one shepherd."

It can be hard for a kid to get waited on in a store. You can stand at the counter forever, but the people working there often ignore you. They don't own the store, and they know you probably aren't buying something big anyway, so they don't bother to be helpful!

This week's Gospel (John 10:11-18) is about good and bad shepherds, but it could be about any good and bad workers. Jesus points out that a guy who was just hired to take care of sheep wouldn't care about them as much as the person who owned them.

Just like that, a person who really cares about their job will wait on you politely, even if you're a kid with very little money. And if that worker owned the whole store, he might be even nicer to customers!

In the Gospel story, the "good shepherd" is really Jesus, and all of us are His "sheep." Because everyone in the world is a child of God, Jesus cares about us a lot. Like a shepherd, He wants to take care of us and keep us close to Him.

There's more to the story, too: Jesus wants all people to be "like one flock with one shepherd." That means everyone should listen to God and be good -- and treat each other well.

That's a good thing to remember when you're waiting in a store for a worker to start paying attention to you: If that person owned the store the way Jesus "owns" the world, he'd be saying, "Can I help you?" right away!