Harassed and Helpless

"Because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." (Matthew 9:36)

Two words, and they are doing enormous work. Harassed. That is not tired. It is a word for something done to you, over and over, by a force outside you. It describes a person being worn down by a pressure they did not invent and cannot stop. Helpless. That is not weak. It is the word for someone who has run out of moves.

And Jesus looks at a crowd of religious people, people with a temple and a law and a priesthood and centuries of Scripture, and he does not see rebels. He sees sheep with no one watching them. That ought to change how you look at the person who is driving you to distraction right now. The difficult one. The defensive one. The one who keeps making the same catastrophic decision.

They are not opposing you. They are unshepherded. There is a very great difference between those two things, and everything you do next depends on which one you believe. Treat a harassed and helpless person as an enemy and you will fight them. See them as a sheep with no shepherd and you will do the thing Jesus did, which is move toward them with compassion instead of away from them with a verdict. Ask, of the person who most exasperates you, not how to win against them, but who has been shepherding them, and whether the answer is no one at all.