God has been the shepherd of souls for a long time, biblically speaking. “The Lord is my shepherd,” declares the psalmist. “Like a shepherd he feeds his flock,” adds Deutero-Isaiah.

If you survived school you probably studied the basic aspects of literature somewhere along the line. Beginning, middle, and end are the nonnegotiable parts of storytelling. Along with those come setting, plot, character, and narrative voice.

Of the apostles named among the 12, we have real affection for only a handful.

If doctors make the worst patients, then surely public speakers are the toughest audience in the pews. When I’m benched on the average Sunday, attending to the homilist, my bottom line invariably remains: “So what?”

Some of the brightest words in the Bible are about loyalty. “Wherever you go, I will go,” says Ruth to Naomi as she leaves her homeland for good.

“O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them.” Are more wonderful words to be spoken in all the world?

If the church didn’t give us Lent, we’d probably have to invent it. We might even spare some compassion for those who don’t have an annual season for reflection on themes as human as they are forbidding: desert, thirst, the need for rescue, darkness, suffering, and death.

An interesting contrast presents itself in our two big Bible stories this week.

Salvation history properly begins in chapter 12 of Genesis. The proto-history of the earlier chapters supplies an artful presentation of the downward spiral of human moral disintegration.

Which would you choose: a debate with the tempter of souls or the sublime company of angels? Most nice people do not hesitate to voice their preference for the latter.