The Peaceful Promise of Psalm 23
Author: Samantha Arp
Every time I go to the store I forget to buy Command hooks. I just moved into a tiny apartment where floor space is scarce, so the majority of my square footage exists as a wall—a wall in which I cannot drill or screw in or nail anything, because my residence there is, well, temporary. Thus the temporary hooks, which I keep forgetting to buy. To be truthful there are still lots of things I need that I don’t have: dish rags, more trash bags, a bath mat, a working lamp. A recent close call with an HVAC fire has also made me consider the necessity of something my landlord called “renter’s insurance,” although I’m not sure what I would insure given the whole of my earthly possessions amounts to little more than consigned clothes on mismatched hangars and too many throw blankets. Not much on the walls yet, either—I keep forgetting those hooks.
There are all kinds of things we think we need. More seriously than my dish rags and trash bags, we all need to be seen, loved, cherished, chosen, and respected. We need to pay our very real bills that have very real consequences for not paying them. We have real people to feed, clothe and drive around to practice and dance lessons. Some of you have medical expenses, unsaved family members, terminal diagnoses, wayward children—burdens that only our Father knows and sees. In times like those, we feel our need deeply. We think about it daily.
And then we open our Bible, some of us less often than we’d like to admit, and we see a God who cares for other peoples’ needs. He split the sea, healed a disease, made the sun stand still, and raised a little girl to life, all for other people. We start to believe that God provides for the needs of other people, but He seems to have skipped right over us. Do you know that feeling?
One particularly frustrating morning between me and the Lord began with me sitting down and wasting no time to get right to complaining about all the ways He had not met my needs that day. I could see a long list of things that He had not seen to yet, and I felt justified in my anger.
Right in the middle of my spiritual temper-tantrum, the Lord sat me right down in Psalm 23 and (gently, as good Fathers do) put my nose to the page. If it’s been a while since you read it in the NIV, it starts like this: “The Lord is my shepherd—I lack nothing.”
As you can imagine, that sentence ran totally against the grain of all my feelings. So I read it again. And again. I had my list of “things” I lacked. I’m sure you do too. How can God be faithful to his Word while we still “lack?”
We stand, as any follower of Jesus often does, at a crossroads between God’s Word and our feelings. I really don’t like it there. But it’s here that God refines and molds us—not when everything is perfect. It’s here where we sit and listen, and He kindly bends His knee to teach. It’s here where He can tend to a heart of stone, weathered by pain and disappointments, and make it beat again if you’ll let Him. This is the hard part, the best part, when we “gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and inquire in His temple” even when it costs us something (Psalm 27:4). So bring it to him. See what He says.
“The Lord is…” There’s lots of ways we could finish that sentence. Mighty, holy, perfect, strong, powerful, loving—all true, all good. But not what He says. He says “The Lord is my shepherd.” Interesting. That’s not the most glamorous thing He could choose. Shepherds sleep on the grass, clean up after animals, and are the sole reason that sheep don’t run off a cliff or thirst to death. Shepherds tend to, feed, guide, protect, and sometimes even carry their sheep. The Lord creates with a word. The Lord exists in continual, celestial worship. And this Lord is your shepherd.
“The Lord is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1) Not “our” shepherd. Not the shepherd of the people who perform perfectly, who seem to have all their prayers answered, or have enough money to meet their own needs. This isn’t talking about your kids, your husband or your pastor. In some way, somehow, by some miracle of grace, you belong to The Lord. You get to call Him “mine.”
The God who speaks and bends His knee low to listen. The God who comes to you. The God who loves you without condition, died to make a way for you, and the God who will not let you go…He is the one who shepherds you. This God is not called “the shepherd of millions,” or “the shepherd of your family,” or “the shepherd of the ones who get it right all the time.” He is your shepherd. It’s really a marvel when you think about it.
I think that’s why David had the audacity to say the next part. Because the Lord is your shepherd—not a human limited by time, space, energy; not a being with little care for your soul, not a distant god who must be appeased and convinced to love you—”you lack nothing.”
Do you think that a Father who gave His Son for you would withhold anything else? In the midst of counting the hairs on your head, do you think He forgot what you need? He says He knows “even before you ask” (Matthew 6:8). Because it is Him who shepherds you and Him to whom you belong, “you lack nothing.” I hope you feel His loving eyes on you, compelling you not to sidestep His promises that He means to land squarely on you. “The Lord is your shepherd, so you lack nothing” (Psalm 23:1)
So what do we do with our lists?
I find that my greatest frustration with God comes when I start to have a theology problem. I forget what God is really like, and start assuming that He is like me: worried, anxious, selfish, stingy, or mean.
When the Spirit gets through my stubbornness and fixes my eyes on who my Father really is, I look down at my list again. Its contents are no less urgent or necessary, but they are less terrifying when seen with a new perspective. If the Lord is my shepherd, then He knows when rent is due. He knows the needs of our children. He knows how tired I am, how difficult marriage is, how tight budgets are, how hopeless I feel—He’s God. He knows. He can handle that. And if the Lord is my shepherd, then He will act in perfect love towards me, no matter what His answer is. If He tells me to wait, then I’d better trust what I don’t see. If He says no, then I must not need it. If He says yes, then I enjoy His blessings. For any answer, I can marvel that the God of the universe—my shepherd—heard me.
Instead of staring at the beginning of Psalm 23 in defiance, counting all the ways God hasn’t answered, what if we leveled it like an arrow to the enemy’s lies? I’ve found it starts to read a little differently, and puts courage in my bones.
What can the world do to you if the Lord is your shepherd? You lack nothing. We are safe in the palm of His capable hands. He knows everything, has everything, and forgets nothing. I still keep forgetting those hooks, though.
“Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.”
