The Lord is my shepherd

I cannot count the number of times I have read or recited Psalm 23. I have read these verses at funerals, graveside services and at the feet of those who were dying. Each of those locations is appropriate for the 23rd Psalm brings comfort and security in troubled times. Yet, by unintentionally limiting the passage to those places I'm afraid narrow the weight of the Lord being my shepherd. Those designations -- Lord and shepherd -- are as powerful to the living as they are comforting to the dying.

The Lord. Christians believe that the Lord spoke all of creation into existence. That before anything was, He is. He spoke and from nothing, ex nihilo, all we see and cannot see came into being. This same Lord who "sits with earth as his footstool" is so mindful and compassionate toward men and women, his created, that he is willing to be compared to a shepherd.

David grew up as a shepherd. When he is first introduced in 1 Samuel, he is out tending the sheep. He is shepherding. A task that it seems no one else in the family wanted. Historians tell is that shepherds were regarded as scrupulous, untrustworthy, and unwanted. It is this lowly class that the Lord associates his name with. The Lord is the shepherd of the outcast and the uplifted, the wanted and the discarded, the trustworthy and those who would not bring home to meet your mother.

Notice though that the Lord is not a generic shepherd. He is my shepherd. He is not some random celebrity who we hear about and want to emulate. Someone you know of, but no matter how closely you watch their career you do not know them.

The Lord is my shepherd. The claim upon him flows from a belonging to him. My both describes what I am in possession of -- that is my car, that is my house -- and what you are possessed by. I belong with my family. I belong with my unit. I fit with them. I am theirs and they are mine.

For the Lord to be my shepherd means that I am one of his sheep. I belong into his fold.

I have a video of a sheep who is stuck in a ditch. Wedged between the cracks with a little fluff sticking above ground. It struggles to get free but cannot. A shepherd reaches into the ditch and pulls the sheep free. Immediately it leaps for joy. Running to and fro only to jump back into the same ditch.

To be compared to this sheep is offensive. The wound though is healing. I'm often in the same ditch I was in days before. I need a shepherd who will pull me out, tell me how to stay out of the ditch, and be willing to so again and again. The Lord, he is my shepherd, and I am his sheep.