MOVING INTO A new situation can seem like heaven—at first. Whether it’s the first day of school, a new job, new digs, or a new haircut, each facet of change feels fresh and clear of all the old obstacles.

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. There will be one shepherd whose authority is final, Ezekiel avows.

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. There are not many fan clubs for Bartholomew (with apologies to the St. Bartholomew Churches out there!).

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. “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord,” Joshua pledges before crossing the Jordan into the promised land.

“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? No loss is as great as what death takes from us. No sorrow is as deep as when our loved ones “go before us, marked with the sign of faith.”

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. On the one hand we’ve got the grumbling nation behind Moses: reasonably thirsty, yet decidedly unpleasant about it.

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. From the perfect joy of paradise we move through original disobedience to murder in one generation.