When routine is imposed (think pandemic!) do we run for freedom or hunker down with the rote and familiar as a conduit for comfort? Psalm 23 was the latter for me. Though composed as a confession of faith and truth – an affirmation of implicit trust - it served me well as a sort of rosary of prayer. It’s been a sturdy rehearsal of truth and a scaffolding to my potentially limp and myopic conversations with God. Picture the inception of this all-too-familiar psalm germinating in the poetic heart of a shepherd boy. Phrases probably came to him in song as he wandered with his sheep – he was a musician after all. He’s penning from his personal experience. But he’s also singing on behalf of all God’s people. Furthermore, he wrote this psalm for Jesus. Jesus, as it were, sings it back to us, ‘I am the Good Shepherd…’. Let’s again rehearse the comfort of these few, very personal while epic, honest truths.
Author: Sarah Raiter
Sarah Raiter is a wife, mum, grandmother, author, and artist. She grew up Pakistan, and went back there with her husband and children. You'll now find Sarah empty-nesting at St James Old Cathedral where Mike and she live and worship. Through art and words, Sarah "creates for the sheer joy of it, the discipline of it, the compulsion of it… and the kinship through it.  I create, as I pray with all my life, that there might be glimpses of refracted truth and glory." For more of her work, see https://containingcolor.wordpress.com