After church, the news of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump thumping in my heart, I had the opportunity to buy my first icon. The Holy Land Christian Solidarity Cooperative was visiting our church in order to bring souvenirs from Bethlehem because the war has hurt Isreali tourism. The speaker said, “These were carvings made from olive wood, some of them from trees 2000 years old.” I looked forward to church being over so I could shop.
The website notes that it was an olive branch the dove brought back to the ark and that olive wood was used for carving of cherubim for doors opening to the inner sanctuary of Solomon’s temple. The cherubim were ten cubits tall and they touched the walls and each other. Solomon overlaid them with gold. He overlaid the entire inner sanctuary with gold. (See I Kings 6). Imagine that’s quite an image for the temple of the Holy Spirit, our bodies, and our communities. Wood symbolizing peace. Gold symbolizing royalty, value.
Jesus went to the Mount of Olives to pray and prayed in the Garden of Gethsemanae (olive press)before he died. He was pressed so hard that he sweated drops of blood and sweat. (We can strive for a “peaceful night and a perfect end” but we too might be hurled into the turmoil of “not my will but thine be done,” and be exactly where Christ was, with Christ alongside us, weeping and groaning and afraid.)
Each carving is made out of cuttings from the olive trees, so no trees were harmed. I think of what Jesus said about how branches are pruned in order to bear more fruit (John 15:2). So I’m looking at a branch that was pruned in order for the tree to bear fruit.
There might be some grace in this because the branch was not thrown away and burned, but instead stored in a dark place, dried and carved. (I know Jesus talks about fruitless branches burned in his talk about vines and branches. I have come to believe that fire might be a good thing, to cut away the dead parts. If a toe or finger dies from something like frostbite, if it’s not cut away, it will poison the rest of us. There is good news even in the burning.)
As I looked at the carvings on the table I realized these are icons—beautifully carved images of Jesus, creches, angels, crucifixes. I’ve been learning about icons as a visual scripture, you can hold in your hand or look at, an image, not words on a page. It points us to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Then I saw a carving of Jesus holding a lamb with a staff in his hand. $100 was in my price range. The wood felt smooth in my hand and full of color. The carving intricate. I held out my bank card. The clerk slipped him in a paper bag that might otherwise be used to carry wine bottles. 
This Shepherd holds that lamb up by his heart. The lamb looks braced like she might struggle out of his arm, but he holds her firmly. “Because you are precious in my eyes and honored and I love you” (Isa 43:4).
He holds a knobbed staff to ward off wolves, coyotes, the powers of darkness. I am glad for that staff, long as a lance, but blunt, that he’s holding straight out, a threat to bash the powers. “Don’t try it I tell you. Don’t.” Moses held a staff he dropped that turned into a serpent. He held it over waters to make them turn to blood and to make them split into dry land, for people to walk across.
The staff comforts me as I face the powers when my thoughts turn rancid and convincing. I can feel them swirl when I want to give up, when life hurts too much and I want to die. The terror of abandonment rises when I feel from my heart how I love Jesus. I repeat the Jesus prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It’s the only way I know to fight these thoughts. They roared one night, all night, I fought back with Lord have mercy but when I woke they were done.
I need the Shepherd’s ferocity and I need to be held in his arms because I am no better than the people who complained about going into the good land because the spies saw giants. I am full of complaint. My latent unhappiness shouts in my ear. I take dictation in my journal. It’s as if I forgot completely how that fiery pillar by night, cloud by day had sent manna and quail and opened the rock for springs of water. I forget all the good things He’s done, being in this good land that is our farm where I wake up afraid and confess my forgetting, when my emotions chant: “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I’m gonna go eat worms,” when I want to die, to go be with my Shepherd. Then I read how Albert Rossi rebukes this by quoting St. John Climacus, “the person who does not repent longs for death as a way out of this life” (134). I tell Jesus I know this is wrong because His kingdom is here now. People have called our farm paradise, have said it’s so quiet, so maybe, just maybe a little of that renewal of creation is happening here. I come back to thank you. He holds me even though I am braced. I prefer the ground because the ground is a miracle better than flying. I feel His strength. His comfort, the silence that comes after tears and groans.
As I wrote in God’s Voice, God is so awesome, so other that he designed his creatures down to the smallest protein. I know about that ferocity from reading the prophets who speak God’s pleading, grieving love toward people who don’t walk straight, lighted paths. But in this icon the ferocity is directed outward, and the kindness, comfort and firmness is wrapped in those arms around the lamb. It’s the kind of glare that stares down the darkness, that in itself says don’t you even think about it. I can hold this image, the look of Jesus on the icon, a look I’ve given Omalola when she has stepped out of line. It’s the kind of look that can back down anything that threatens that little lamb. It’s the “if looks could kill” look, full of of authority. I can hold this image of God who says, “Fear not for I am with you” (Isa. 43:5a, ESV).
“But this good shepherd is also an image of God the father, holding the little lamb that was slain, the lamb that was lost, that wandered away, because Jesus wandered outside the gates, all the way to the pit of hell. Here is God the Father, holding the lamb who cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” the intimacy shouted in the my God cry. God the father holding the little lamb that is the lion of the tribe of Judah.
I hope one day to meet the person who carved the this Shepherd’s eyes, made a nail hole in his hands, gave him a blunt staff, and a strong grasp on a lamb who’d rather her feet were on the ground.
I bought this Good Shepherd icon because I remembered an excerpt from my novel The River Caught Sunlight, a passage that came to me like a vision. I thought of this vision, of my dad climbing down and finding me on the cliff edge. And cliff edge it was as I sat in Liberty Baptist church, hearing an awful sermon, hours away from getting the news he’d died. I was on a cliff alright, because I’d return to guiding Francis and Edith Schaeffer on his A Christian Manifesto author tour. I would start walking the long walk of grief, with my parents gone, a walk that isn’t finished yet. But that’s for next time.
Works Cited
Holy Bible English Standard Version. Crossway, 2016.
“Why Olive Wood?” Holy Land Christian Solidarity Cooperative, holylandcsc.com/. Accessed 20 July 2024
ROSSI, ALBERT S. Becoming a Healing Presence. ANCIENT FAITH PUBLISHING, 2021.