Leaping into abundant life with Jesus!
James Cathcart
April 29, 2026
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John 10: 1-10 (NIV-UK)
10 ‘Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognise a stranger’s voice.’ 6 Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.
7 Therefore Jesus said again, ‘Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. 9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
Light travels much, much faster than sound. In a vacuum it travels 186,000 miles per second. If you were travelling at that speed you could circumnavigate the globe seven and a half times before the second was up. Meanwhile sound waves would only get about 343 metres over that second. That’s about to the corner shop. You could get a Twix.
Now that was light travelling in a vacuum and sound that was travelling through air so was that a fair comparison? What if the light travelled through the air, across the space between us now? Well, that would be a slog that would slow it by… 0.03%. So hardly at all.
And sound in a vacuum — a space devoid of any matter — would travel a mighty 0.0mph because there would be nothing to vibrate. It would travel no distance. You’re not even getting a Twix. As they say, in space no one can hear you scream. Even if you’re screaming for a Twix.
But for our purposes today, as human beings, the speed of sound has two advantages over light.
A small rectangle of foil, say around a chocolate bar, can stop light dead in its tracks. No light is reaching the dark side of the Twix. Sound though will wave right on through the the sticks of chocolate coated caramel and biscuit.
The other advantage is that we hear way quicker than we see. Light is a high-res file, it takes our brains a hot moment to make sense of it. Sound is much easier for our brains to process. This is why racers running a sprint — where every split second counts — need starting pistols to launch a race instead of a flag. A sign changing colour might reach our eyes faster than the retort of a pistol reaches our ears — but the sound will get to our brain way before the visual change does.
Do we sometimes focus so much on signs, and what God might be showing us, on discernment, on reading the right thing, seeing the right thing, working out the way forward — that we miss the much simpler things Jesus is saying, if we would listen?
Sometimes are we like a herd of sheep with 101 tabs open on our hoof-operated smart watches trying to take it all in — to work out where on earth the shepherd has got to and which is the way to go, while munching our foil wrapped high street chocolate brands.
When actually the shepherd is by the gate where he’s always been, saying what he’s always said, “Come home.”
Prayer:
Dear God,
Help me to recognise your voice
speaking the words ‘come home’
in every simple gesture of compassion and love.
Amen.
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