Greater love hath no man than this...

(Jesus said) "I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep" (John 10:11).

(Tim, w/thanks to Todd W.) The NYTimes' David Brooks sets out to explain how a nation of five million won as many gold medals as our nation of three-hundred million at the Winter Olympics this year. So he tells a brief version of the story of Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian instrument maker who tried to get back into Norway to help the Norwegian resistance movement during the Second World War.

The account reminds me of the Apostle Paul. What courage and tenacity in the face of the most terrible danger and suffering these hardened men demonstrated!

Which prompts me to ask when it was, precisely, that the sign of godliness in a pastor changed...

from suffering to peering down on hoi polloi from his perch on the New York Times bestseller list and getting invitations to preach in the Crystal Cathedral?

What a wonderful day we live in, when to preach the Cross of Christ brings terribly gifted men the world's adulation.

May God raise up shepherds after His Own heart who bear the smallest resemblance to the Apostle Paul and Jan Baalsrud.