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I Will


          Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. (Psalm 23:6)

        Can you believe the Twenty-Third Psalm is only six verses long? If it were longer, or shorter, we might not find it so comforting. But if you read through the psalm as a whole, you’ll find that one verse (this one, obviously) is not like the others. The Lord is my shephard…He makes me lie down…He leads me… He prepares. It’s almost all present tense, except “I shall not want” and “I will dwell.”
         For some, these snippets of action on our part are not present tense. It’s all “in the sweet by and by.” That’s not necessary. If I will, then I will just as much right now as I will will in the future. “I will lose weight” doesn’t happen until you’re doing something in that direction. It requires a present tense action. So “I will dwell” involves not only assurance of the future truth, but some measure of present action.
         The other notable thing about the “I shall not want” and “I will dwell” is that they are the only parts of the psalm in which we act. With all of the rest, the Lord does the work. Our job is to not-want and to dwell.

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