I Shall Not Want

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Psalm 23:1

If your church follows a lectionary, then this coming Sunday is Shepherd Sunday. Even some of the churches that don’t follow one of these calendar plans for scriptures will read from John 10 and think about the metaphors of God as Shepherd and/or Christ as Shepherd.

I’m not preaching this week, but I've been thinking about that first verse of Psalm 23. Up until a few months ago, I’d only ever thought about it as saying, since God is my shepherd (and I am God’s sheep) I will never really have any needs. God will take care of me.

Which is a fine sentiment, but in the world today 750 million people lack access to safe drinking water – more than twice the U.S. population.[1] And about 2,300 people die each day from diarrhea caused by unsafe drinking water, sanitation, and hand hygiene.[2] And, I say to myself, surely some of these people must be Jewish or Christian (just statistically speaking.)

So, as much as I appreciate the words of comfort this psalm provides, I’ve come to see it as somewhat… irrelevant. Not for myself necessarily, but as one more piece of the “this doesn’t touch my life” irrelevance that keeps so many people from trying God or trying church.

Recently, though, I read another perspective. What if, instead of taking this lovely verse as an expectation that we will be taken care of, we instead hear it this way ... “Since God is my shepherd, I choose to let that be enough. I will not to want anything beyond that.”

God is God and, good or bad, sunshine or rain, I will trust that this is sufficient. I will not pine after a bigger TV or tastier foods or a guy-friend. I will not cry out in indignation when bad things happen – as they will – for I now understand that the psalmist wasn’t suggesting that everything’ll be peachy.

I find this freeing in a way. God is still God, as much as ever, but I’m in a … more mature place. I still lean on God (oh, boy, do I lean) but I accept that there is a lot I can do and that I should, and even must, do.

God is my shepherd, and the shepherd for those children who are dying because their parents can’t provide them with clean drinking water. I suppose I’m stretching the metaphor, but I – and we, each – share in the ownership of each other’s situations. Just like the flock is all in it together, so are we.

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As an aside, the book in the bible is called Psalms (plural), but when you’re talking about one of them, it’s a psalm (singular). It’s like nails on the chalkboard for me to hear a person say, Psalms 46 verse 10 (or something similar.)

[1] World Health Organization and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP). 2014.
[2] Tropical Medicine and International Health. 19, no. 8 (2014): 894 - 905.