What’s It All About?

Psalm 23:1 –

‘The Lord is my Shepherd’

Psalm 23 is perhaps the most famous of all the psalms. As a staple verse of funerals and fridge magnets, you'd be hard-pressed to find anybody unfamiliar with the imagery of green pastures and shadowed valleys. What's more, it possesses the highest honour a songwriter could hope for - the theme-tune to the Vicar of Dibley! Yet, greater than its familiarity - and sadly often lost in it - is its potency. As one country preacher once said - ‘Psalm 23 contains more nutrients for the soul than all the food in all the fridges it's a magnet on.’

‘But why is it so powerful?’ I hear you shouting at your screen.

The answer: its focus. In its metaphor and imagery, it's easy to mistake the focal point of this psalm. You'd be forgiven for thinking it's about the thirst-quenching brooks, or the green pastures turned resting place. You may miss its real message for the poetry of death’s valley, the rod and staff, or the heavenly house. This psalm is not about rest nor death, nor eternity. The focus, so often missed in the following one hundred and fifteen words, is revealed in the first two: ‘The Lord’. Each image embedded has something to teach us about the Lord. The psalm encapsulates the whole of life: it's so full of stuff... some pleasant... some painful.

Wherever you find yourself today, valley or mountaintop, there is something of The Lord to be discovered there.

During this week, we will consider some more of this psalm's contents, but we won't scratch the surface of all it has to teach us. I invite you to spend time with this scripture yourselves and I pray that as you read and re-read the words you would encounter the shepherd. 

Prayer – Thank you that you are here with me. Thank you that you are always with me. Open my eyes to see you today and to discover more about you.