There are only two passages in the Bible I could confidently quote from memory. Even then, I’m not sure I could count on a hundred percent accuracy. The first is the Lord’s prayer, and the second is Psalm 23. I’ve written before about how over-familiarity with a passage can lead us to miss out on its full meaning. Yet I had an amazing experience with Psalm 23 a few weeks back that made me realise it wasn’t just the depths of beauty in the Psalm I was failing to understand, but more frighteningly, the Shepherd himself.
I’ve known Jesus all my life. I was brought up on a diet of Bible stories and faith lessons. His presence has always been a reality to me, and I can’t pinpoint the exact day or hour I was saved. As a child, I believed he could do anything. I heard the incredible miracles about the loaves and the fish and about a little boy slaying a giant with a stone and a sling, and I thought: “Wow! That’s my God!”
Yet as an adult, I saw giants in my own life and in the lives of those I loved that weren’t being destroyed. I suffered disappointments, and I became jaded. I suppose I began to wonder why, if God was so able, he didn’t just swoop in and fix all my problems with a word or a wave of his Almighty hand.
During the past few years since I began this ministry, my life has become busier. Writing commitments, having to keep up with a constant reading schedule in order to produce book reviews, … It all takes time. Plus, I have pressures in my own church and family life. I thought I was going along well. I was serving the Lord in some capacity almost every day. My hours were filled with the things of Jesus. Yet I didn’t realise how empty my soul had become. I was living on autopilot, and I didn’t know it. I had become a machine – a human doing instead of a human being.
Then I began reding a series of books that brought everything into sharp focus. They are fictional, but incredibly deep. They are about our spiritual journey. I was immediately convicted by some of what I was reading. Especially the parts about God’s love. I thought I knew God loved me. I’d been told that all my life, but somehow I’d begun to see his love as that of a stern teacher or disciplinarian rather than that of a father who just loves being with his children.
Having read two of the four books in the incredible sensible Shoes series, a friend and I stumbled upon the study guides which were written to help readers develop more of the practices taught in the books. The study questions call for a re-reading of the text at a much deeper level. And it was at this point that the Lord really helped me understand where I’ve been going wrong.
Going on a meaningful spiritual journey calls for more than just a casual reading of our Bibles. If we want to get to know God, one of the main ways we can do so is through his word. I had been reading my Bible, but sometimes it was merely a box I ticked off my daily to do list. On other occasions I read it for deep study, to prepare a sermon or write a devotional, but I hadn’t been reading for personal application or to seek God’s love for me.
Part way through our study, my friend and I came to a section where we were being taught to read the Bible with imagination. This means not just reading and theologically analysing a text, but rather putting yourself at the centre of it. If you’re reading a story, you can imagine yourself as part of the cast of characters. Where you would place yourself in the scene says a lot about where you are on your spiritual journey. So for example, if you placed yourself in the story of the feeding of the five thousand, would you be one of the hungry crowd crying out and desperate for food? Would you be worried when the baskets began being passed around that there wouldn’t be any left by the time it got to you? Or would you be one of the disciples helping to hand round the baskets? Would you be amazed by the miracle, or doubting and still wondering if you were going to be fed? Putting yourself into a Biblical scenario like this really helps the text come to life. After all, as Paul said to Timothy: “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.” (2Timothy 3: 16-17.) Why do we always presume teaching and equipping can only come after deep theological study? Why can’t it also come through lingering with a passage, imagining yourself in the midst of it, and pondering how you would have reacted or interacted with the other characters?
The passage my friend and I were encouraged to ponder was Psalm 23. I must admit I thought that would be easy. Yet as we slowly read the psalm, I was distressed by what I learned about myself and the wrong ways in which I was seeing the Good Shepherd.
It was when we got to verse 4 that the problem became most evident. Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me.” I pictured myself in that dark valley. As a child learning from the King James Bible, I’d read of it being the valley of the shadow of death. It’s not a place any of us would choose to be. Yet it’s somewhere we may have to go. I could picture the darkness and the gloom. I imagined myself surrounded by dense trees that blotted out the sun, trudging painfully through some kind of thick dark slime. I’m not sure where the slime came from. My mind clearly added that part. Then I looked around, and I knew there was an end to the valley. I could see a sunlit clearing somewhere in the distance, but the slime and the trees were hindering me from getting to it. It felt like every time I took a step forward, I immediately took two steps back.
Suddenly, as my mind took me through this valley, the question came: where is the Shepherd? So I looked, and I realised where he was. He was out in the sunlit clearing staring in at me. And there was disapproval on his face. His arms were folded like a stern headmaster as he looked down his nose at me and pointed his finger, declaring with his body language that he was disappointed by my weak and feeble efforts to navigate the valley. Hadn’t I been a Christian all my life? Hadn’t he give me plenty of tools with which to navigate? I’ve read the Bible many times through. I know the truths of who God is and what he expects of his children. Yet I was still crying and trudging through slime. After all he’d done for me, I was still failing and disappointing him.
Then there was the rod and staff. Only he wasn’t going to use them to protect and comfort me as the Psalm says. Rather, I saw them as implements of correction. He was waiting to boing me on the head with them when I finally reached his side – if I ever managed to get away from the dark trees and the sludge and slime. The rod and staff were yet more things to dread.
As I thought about all this, I felt my heavenly Father’s sadness. I could almost hear him saying: “Is this how you see me? When did you lose sight of me as your Good Shepherd – as your loving Father who wants to give you everything you need? When did you forget the part that says I am close beside you in the valley so you needn’t be afraid?” This brought me up short and set me on a journey of rediscovering Jesus as my Good Shepherd.
I have now been on that journey for a few weeks, and it’s a journey of healing and renewal. I keep placing myself mentally back in the valley and allowing my mind to see a new picture. This time, the Shepherd isn’t looking sternly on from the side-lines waiting to boing me with his rod and staff. Rather, he is holding my hand and encouraging me as we trudge together through the sludge and slime and the dark foreboding trees. I know he could remove the valley immediately and bring me out into the sunlit clearing, but he has things to teach me that I can only learn in the valley. However, he doesn’t expect me to learn those lessons alone. And when I am slow in learning as I so often am, he encourages rather than shouts. He picks me up if I fall and become overwhelmed, maybe even carries me for a while on his shoulders, and then puts me back down when I am rested and on we go – hand-in-hand until we come out into the times of refreshing.
Truly, my Saviour is a Good Shepherd, and he will provide everything I need. The trouble is that the things I feel I need aren’t always those that are best for me. I certainly won’t choose to go into more valleys, but I hope that when I do I will remember where my Shepherd is. I hope I will have more confidence to reach for his hand, to be honest and tell him when it’s getting to hard, and to hear his words of love and encouragement. I pray I will see his rod and staff as implements of comfort and protection rather than correction, and I won’t go back to the wrong images that worked their way into my head so slowly that I didn’t even realise they were there.