Welcome to today's encouragement from our daily bread. Today's reading titled Great Wisdom and

A Thousand Eyes was written by Monica LaRose. The Shepherd Needs Great Wisdom and A Thousand

Eyes, wrote the beloved church father, John Chrysostom.

To examine the soul's condition from every angle, Chrysostom wrote these words as part of a

discussion on the complexity of caring well for others spiritually. Since it's impossible to force

anyone to heal, he emphasized reaching others' hearts requires

great empathy and compassion.

But that doesn't mean never causing pain.

Chrysostom cautioned because if you behave too leniently to one who needs deep surgery

and do not make a deep incision in one who requires it, you mutilate

yet miss the cancer. But if you make the needed incision without mercy, often the patient in

despair at his sufferings throws all aside and promptly throws himself over a cliff.

There's a similar complexity in how Jude chapter one describes

responding to those led astray by false teachers whose behavior he describes starkly. Yet when Jude

turns to how to respond to such grave threats, he doesn't suggest reacting with harsh anger. Instead, he taught that believers should respond

to threats by rooting themselves even more deeply in God's love, for it's only when we're

deeply anchored in God's unchanging love that we can find the wisdom to help others with appropriate urgency, humility, and compassion. The wisdom is not that we can find the wisdom to help others with appropriate urgency, humility, and compassion,

the way most likely to help them find healing and rest in God's boundless love.

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from Jude, Chapter 1, verses 17 through 23.

But dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold.

They said to you, in the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own

ungodly desires. These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not

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