The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake. (Psalm 23:1-3)
This is
another of the many passages that we either love or hate – or sometimes love
and hate. It’s really humiliating. Consider the number of people who flock
together to denounce Christians (and especially Conservative Christian) as “sheople”
or “sheep.” I’ve chuckled at some of these people. First, they proclaim themselves
to be the enemy of these sheople. But one of the main enemies of sheep is the
wolf – or wolf pack. So as they proclaim the sheople to be dangerous, the image
that comes to mind is of a sheep holding a wolf up against a wall and bleating,
“Baa-lieve!”
But that
doesn’t make it any less humiliating. Consider the stereotypes for sheep. Cute
and cuddly as a lamb, but dumb as a brick once it grows up. It follows along
where it’s called to go, or is herded either to the slaughterhouse or to be
fleeced of its valuables. If you’ve read about shepherds and sheep, you’ll know
that sheep can be stubborn, stupid, silly, and dirty. They take a lot of work
to care for – and having met at least one sheep in my life - they smell. This
is not the sort of label we want to wear.
But, if you read Phillip Keller’s book A Shepherd Looks At the
Twenty-third Psalm, you can’t help but see the similarities between sheep and
people, no matter how embarrassing it is. So, let’s step back and consider. The
Lord is my Shepherd…
He makes me lie down in green pastures. He provides food. He meets my
need for time to rest and digest.
He leads me beside quiet waters. He provides water. He makes sure it’s not
scary or dangerous for me to drink.
He restores my soul. Oh, Lord, please. I so want this. He fixes my
battered, broken, rusted out, beat up, tired soul. He replaces the parts that
need to be, washes it, paints it, and makes it like new.
He guides me in the paths of righteousness… This involves His leading me
to a land I do not know, as He led Abraham.
As Dallas Willard described it, this passage of Scripture teaches us that
the universe is a perfectly safe place for us sheep.
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