The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.
He restores my soul; He leads me in the
paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death, I will fear no evil;
for You are with me; Your rod and Your
staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the
presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs
over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life;
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.
Psalm 23
I am not a shepherd.
I raise goats, and while they are substantially different from their
wooly cousins, they can still provide their keeper with a good hands-on understanding
of this familiar psalm by David the shepherd.
Recently, I took notice of the words David uses in this psalm to refer
to God. He opens with beautiful
statements in the third person about the Good Shepherd’s daily care for His
sheep. The picture is a white-on-green
pastoral of contented sheep walking along a wide, smooth path behind their
Shepherd without a care in the world.
But suddenly, the picture changes to a dark and narrow path where the
sheep is alone and afraid.
As a shepherd, David likely dealt with sickness and
injuries in his flock on a regular basis.
In my herd, I’ve also seen my share of deviations from the usual food
and water routine of keeping animals. A
year ago, one of my goats became deathly ill with what appeared to be a case of
tetanus. I separated her from the rest
and showered her with attention, shots, and medicines. Miraculously, she made a full recovery from
that usually fatal disease, and learned to trust me in the process. David would have known that the first thing
to do for an ailing animal is to get it alone so it can be treated according to
its individual needs. Perhaps this is
why, when his psalm turns to darker matters, he changes the language to the
second person and focuses directly on God Himself. God is no longer “He”, but “You”.
Sometimes life is all green pastures and still waters for
us as God’s sheep. We appreciate the
Shepherd and talk about Him to other sheep, but somehow, we generally tend to
get busy grazing and playing with our fellow lambs, and spend less time with
the Shepherd Himself. That is, until we
find ourselves in some calamity. No more
chewing our cud on the warm sweet grass, no more running around with fellow
sheep. That’s when the Shepherd steps in,
faithful to the least of his flock. He
takes us off by ourselves and gives us the best of everything – though we don’t
often feel that shots, medicines, splints and bandages are best. But the Shepherd’s skillful care brings us
back to health, and in the process, we learn to trust Him and love Him more
than ever. Then He restores us to the
flock, and we can say with new understanding to our fellow lambs that we will
belong to the Good Shepherd forever.
David closes this beautiful psalm by speaking of God in
the third person once again, declaring to others his assurance that because of
his time alone with God, the future will be blessed, and he will spend eternity
with Him. Let us never be afraid to go
through the valley alone with our Shepherd, for it is there that we best learn
the blessing of belonging to His flock.