Series Introduction

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.  

Reflection:  

These verses from Genesis are deeply heart-warming, aren’t they? That’s because Eden is in our blood. We’re deeply rooted to the soil, the actual dirt from which we build our sandcastles. A sensibility to garden beauty and husbandry is in our muscle memory. What’s more, the sweet companionship and appreciation of others – of God himself, is our genetic design.

I mean, who longs for a broken world? No one. Not when we have a picture of paradise imprinted on us. David’s journal entry, Psalm 23, while altogether realistic, is awash with that pastoral utopia. He meets his Lord and shepherd in the garden, in the cool of the day.

The shepherd picture is painted more than 90 times in the Old Testament alone, very often as combination shepherd-king. In fact, this image of lordly shepherd was pervasive long before that. Ancient agricultural societies saw their gods/kings as shepherds. Wouldn’t your ideal rulers also comfort? Ideally, they’d feel the pain of the people they protected.

Prayer:  Settle me today in this ancient landscape, Lord and shepherd. Fingering the grass and attentive to trickling streams, I’m in your company. That, just that, is enough.