Good Shepherd Sunday

Beloved of God,

    I mentioned on Sunday that I would like us to find ways to support the ministry of our friends at New Mexico Baptist Children’s Home and Family Ministries. We’ll be talking more about this in the coming weeks, but if you would like more information in the meanwhile, you may want to visit their website here. 
    This Sunday in the lectionary is Good Shepherd Sunday, where we spend time looking at several passages that ask us to meditate on the way Jesus is our Good Shepherd. But I would like to use this letter to give us a chance to meditate on the most famous “shepherding” passage in all of Scripture, the 23rd Psalm. This Psalm isn’t very long. It’s only about 6 verses, and as is often the case it is even shorter in the Hebrew. But the most intriguing part of the poetry of Psalm 23 to  me comes right in the midst of verse four:

    4 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.

There’s a tiny little shift in there. The Psalm, which so far has only spoken of God in the third person, suddenly speaks of God as if He is immediate. But notice when this shift happens:“...though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for you are with me”. It is in the moment that the darkness is so deep as to feel like death that the Psalmist notices that God is present, and begins to speak to God instead of about God.
    Now, that’s not easy to do. It’s not easy to notice God in the very midst of our deepest worry, hurt, and sorrow. But I don’t think the Psalmist writes this to shame us if we can’t do it. I think the Psalmist gives us this image to remind us that whether we recognize it in the moment or not, God is present to us even in our very hardest days. God is faithful. God is unafraid of what we fear. God does not even hesitate to set a lavish feast for us right in the moment we feel the most threatened. We must learn to rest in God the way that sheep rest in their shepherd. We may not always be able to do it, but we will certainly not learn to do so unless we practice that kind of trust. And one of the best ways we can practice this is by making this psalm our own. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

Please join me this week in praying for:

• An end to this pandemic.
  
• Doctors, nurses, PA’s, paramedics and others who work hard to keep us all well.
• Those in positions of public trust at the federal, state, and local level.
• Those among us who may be sick or hurt whether in mind, body, or spirit.
• Little ways each day where we might be Christ’s presence to those who do not know Him, or who need Him.
• In praise for the Church; for a family among whom we can live out our discipleship. And to that end…
• Each other (please email [email protected] if you’d like to be added to our prayer ministry)
  

You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world,

Marshall