The first church I served was a rural congregation in northern Maryland, and one of the members there raised sheep for a living. Being a city boy myself, I admitted to him that I knew next to nothing about raising sheep, and so he invited me out to his farm one day to give me a crash course.

The first thing he told me was that, contrary to popular opinion, sheep are not dumb animals. “It’s the cattle ranchers who started spreading that ugly rumor,” he said, “and all because sheep behave differently than cows.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well, for starters, cows are herded from the rear,” he explained. “You get a group of cowboys hooting and hollering, or cracking their whips, and basically you force the cows to move in a certain direction. But that won’t work with sheep, because sheep will not go anywhere unless someone—namely, the shepherd—walks ahead to show the sheep that everything is all right.”

In other words, you push cows, but you lead sheep!

It’s no wonder that Jesus referred to himself as “the Good Shepherd”—the One who knows us through and through, and calls for us by name … the One who guides us to green pastures and leads us beside the still waters.

Jesus doesn’t force us to move in a certain direction. Rather, he invites us to follow him. Granted, we may not always know what awaits us on the road ahead. But we can be certain that we are not traveling on that road all by ourselves. Indeed, Jesus is the One who traveled the road first, and still walks before us to show us the way.