A Pastor’s Thoughts

By Rev. Nancy J. Adams, Owego United Methodist Church —

A little girl, trying to learn the 23rd Psalm, got it more right than wrong when she said, “The Lord is my shepherd, that’s all I want.” 

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” For the longest time, I just didn’t understand what that verse meant. Then I read the paraphrase of the 23rd psalm in the Living Bible when I was in junior high. It said, “Because the Lord is my shepherd, I have everything I need.” Ah, there it is.

Vss. 2 and 3 paint a beautiful, relaxing picture in the midst of the rat race of our lives. “He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. When life gets crazy, we should just stop and say those words to ourselves and picture ourselves lying in the grass by a beautiful stream. Verse 3: “He restores my soul.” Soul” here means life. Verse 3 continues: “He leadeth me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” A shepherd will not lead sheep down the wrong path, nor will God lead us down the wrong path. 

Verse 4: “Even though I walk through the shadow of death, I fear no evil for You are with me; Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”  A truer rendering of the “shadow of death” is “the valley of deep darkness.”  A shepherd’s rod was a weapon to ward off enemies of the sheep. The staff was used to guide the way. The shepherd goes out in front of the sheep to lead the way, especially through the darkness. Unless they were sick or distracted, the sheep always followed their shepherd knowing that it was the right path, even though it might lead over steep and difficult places. That should be instructive to us.

Verse 5: Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over. In that culture at that time, enemies of a person could only stand and glare from outside the tent of where a person was taking refuge. They could not enter in. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” One can continue to dwell with his or her host (God) for as long as one lives, to the dismay of one’s enemies.

The 23rd Psalm candidly faces the inevitable in life. It doesn’t say “If I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” It says, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” There’s a big difference between the word “if” and the word “though.” Sometimes life isn’t overflowing with cups or green pastures, is it? Sometimes we’re not lying in green pastures, but really struggling on blue Mondays. Sometimes we’re not resting by the shore of still waters but wrestling in the valley of the shadow of death. Sometimes it seems like the enemies are bearing down on us and are going to come right through the tent.   

We all have a valley in our lives. The valley of the shadow of death is something a person goes through. We can walk through our sorrows. We can walk through our pain. We can walk through our mistakes. How?  The Lord will walk through them with us. The reason Jesus came to earth was so that we could know “God with us.” He isn’t just God with us – Emmanuel at Christmas. The one walking through the valley with us is the one who suffered and died for our sins on the cross, Jesus Christ.  Emmanuel.  God with us. The good shepherd, as John, Chapter 10, tells us. By the way, do you know what the last words of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, were? “The best of all is, God is with us.”  Hallelujah.