Psalm 23

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

Even 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.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;

You have anointed my head with oil;

My cup overflows.

Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The 23^rd Psalm has so many abiding resonances for me. Along with great throngs of little ones, I was also taught to memorize this Song to give me comfort and to hold it close in my heart when I was alone. The simple rhythms of its meter, and the direct statements that a child admires always surrounded me with the Lord’s Presence long before I could fully understand the words. After my parents left our dark room at night it was the cadence of these words that guided me into sleep.

The paintings on ancient family walls of Jesus with His staff surrounded by His confidently protected flock, or those paintings of Jesus with children on His knee were the images that came into my young mind as I said the words. I knew that like the little lambs I wanted to stay close to the One with the resources to get me through. I also wanted to laugh with the other children knowing that Jesus never hindered one of us from His side. It was clear that I needed a Shepherd of this kind because in my heart I was sure about how very little a child can really do for herself, and I wanted Him--this Jesus--to be my Defender, since my parents could not be with me at all times.

But it was always the first verse that gave me such a startle. I actually did not want to grow-up because of that line: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” I wondered what was wrong with the adult way of thinking and behaving if they both knew that they had such a magnificent Shepherd, and yet they had to act as though they didn’t want Him! What happens to the understanding when it matures that grown-up people had to pretend to not wanting Some One so marvelous? I would not do it! And I promised the Lord each time that I prayed the Psalm that I would never stop wanting Him as my Shepherd, no matter how old I got.

The Psalm’s message delivered me with great protection on a family vacation to the busy New York City streets when I was six years old. Somehow, on a Manhattan sidewalk I let go of my mother’s hand, and instantly I was lost in a moving sea of strangers’ hands.

I started to say the words to the Psalm as the Lord moved me out of the bustling place, and by His staff He directed me to move back against the building, and to stand still, and to look into the sky. I wanted to cry because of awful fear, and over how much I missed my mother. When I looked into the sky, He had placed there an image of the one who I thought was His own mother to calm me, and I was amazed over her peaceful beauty. It was as though Her face said that I should fear no evil as her Son had shepherded me into a place of green pastures and quiet waters. I don’t remember seeing anything else during this time--only the assurance on a mother’s beautiful face, and how the words of the 23^rd Psalm were so real to me until my own mother found me with tears of joy and embraces.

Back in our hotel room, surrounded by the love of my family, I was sure I would always want Him and no amount of aging was ever going to change this. I was so grateful for His leading and will never forget the words as they were spoken to the kind gaze of the vision of His mother, or she may have been one of His angels. I simply knew that she was the mother in the heavens, keeping my gaze, until my own mother retraced our steps and found me, looking up into the sky on a frenetic, garish, neon-lit New York City street, in complete peace.

The 23^rd Psalm is obviously quite important to me--little saved lamb that I was. During the following years I was untiring in asking questions about what I was reading in my Bible about the tenderlovingkindness of this Shepherd.

By the time I was 12 years old I still held this perplexing view that as an adult you would have to feign not wanting the loving Shepherd if you were going to follow the natural order of things. It was then that I read an illustrated poem from my mother’s Ideal Magazine. The drawing and the poem told the story of a girl and boy, just about my age, setting off in a tiny craft upon the waves that definitely looked a bit too high for their talents. They were headed, the poem told me, to the Land of Maturity leaving behind their small and charming ways on the shore. No one ever saw my reaction to this piece of literature, but I cried with my whole body wracked with spasms over the whole repellant idea.

I knew that my boat was sailing, but I just couldn’t think of not wanting Him--the One who could sail this scary boat with such great Authority!

I have told you these childhood stories in an attempt to make an important point! The issue is about growing-up and about how an adult must finally choose her own faith, not because she was a particularly pious child, and not because her family easily handed it to her, and not because her maturing proclivities readily followed her childhood tendencies.

None of these will do! I am here to testify that for the next 18 years of my life I turned away from the Great Shepherd of my soul. I couldn’t stay a child, and many things intervened which hardened my heart. I found that growing-up took toughness, and the loneliness that I felt seemed to bounce back at me from an iron heaven. I made so many wrong choices. The little craft that sailed out to the Land of Maturity for me was shipwrecked on a cruel and empty island that could only support near starvation of the heart. These were years of confusion, sadness, emotional violence, and choices filled with self-hatred.

The only things that I admired during these years of torment were people whom I thought were seeking the truth. I stayed on in my Campus town long after graduation just to be around such people in all of the grand disciplines studied at a great university. When I got to know the brilliant people beyond their chosen fields, they also seemed to share a similar brutal island--the same as mine. I couldn’t imagine that their wonderful learning and stellar abilities in their studies couldn’t redeem their lives more successfully.

Truth was still the pursuit. I read, and sought-out people of learning, only to be dismally disappointed by the quality of their lives--full of jealousies, and manipulations, and lying. They studied truth, but they lived a lie. How could this be?

Some years later, I met the man who has been my dearest husband for the last 33+ years. The Shepherd’s staff was again leading me out of the mad foray, back to a place, against the building, actually His temple, where I could hear and see His glory. It had been a long absence from such tenderness as I allowed Him to guide me to hear from this person. Jim was very smart, but humble. He was a top scholar in his field, and the first thing that he ever said to me was: “Debbie, the Truth is not a thing, it is a Person, and His name is Jesus!” This singular phrase, that my hungry heart awaited, sent me off to meeting Christians and studying His Word with the most passion-filled application, and to an ongoing study (to this very day) of the Love of Christ with my dear gift of a husband.

I awake each morning now with the child-like heart that knows clearly the meaning that: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want (for anything.)” Italics are mine. And with a fully adult heart I chose a Truth that lives, and walks among us, and has sent His Spirit to dwell in the Holy-of-Holies-Temple within us--a Truth that would die for all my so many terrible sins to give me freedom and victory. This Truth is fully compatible in experience as He is in Word. This Truth loves the Children of His Daddy. This Truth never leaves us alone. And I will always want Him and He leaves me never wanting for anything because His love is eternally bountiful. Dear Jesus, Your paths of righteousness are so lovely because of Your glorious Name’s sake! Your Truth never ends, it never fails, it stretches beyond heaven, and it reaches to each one--lambs bleating for a Shepherd. As it says of us in Matthew 9:36: “Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.” He is all Love, Dear Friend, and all Truth! He is my only want.