THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD.
Centuries before
Jesus came to be the Shepherd, the Father said, “Therefore I will save my
flock. And I will set up one Shepherd over them, and He shall feed them, even
my servant David; He shall feed them, and He shall be their Shepherd.” And it
seems to me, I catch a glimpse of the Father’s yearning love as I read these
words; and I feel sure He laid help upon One who was mighty; and that none who
are in this flock need fear any evil. He has undertaken His duties, knowing
perfectly well what the responsibilities are. He knows that He has to do with
very silly sheep, who have no strength to protect themselves, no wisdom to
guide themselves, and nothing to recommend them but their utter helplessness
and weakness. But none of these things baffle Him. His strength and His skill
are sufficient to meet every emergency that can possibly arise.
There is
absolutely only one thing that can hinder Him, and that is if the sheep will
not trust Him, and refuse to let Him take care of them. If they stand off at a
distance, and look at the food He has provided, and long for it, and cry for
it, but refuse to eat it, He cannot satisfy their hunger if they linger outside
the shelter He has made, and are afraid to go in and enjoy it, because they
feel too distrustful or too unworthy, He cannot protect them…. If He is
your Shepherd, then He wants to care for you in the very best possible way; for
He is a good Shepherd, and cares for His sheep. It is no matter what you
think about it, or how you feel. You are not the shepherd, you are only
the sheep, and the great point is what He thinks, and how He
feels. Lose sight of yourself for a moment, and try to put yourself in the
shepherd’s place. Consider your condition as he considers it. See Him coming
out to seek you in your far-off wondering. See His tender, yearning love, His
unutterable longing to save you. Believe His own description of Himself, and
take Him at His own sweet word. Ah, dear friends, “if your faith were but more
simple, you would take Him at His word, and your lives would indeed be
all gladness in the sunshine of our Lord!”
Then when once
you begin really to know Him as He is, and to understand what it means to have
the Lord for your Shepherd, you may look at your part of the matter again, and
seek to find out what the sheep’s duties are. The part of the sheep is very
simple. It is only to trust and follow. The Shepherd does all the rest. He
leads the sheep by a right way. He choses their paths for them, and sees that
those paths are paths where the sheep can walk in safety. When He putteth forth
His sheep He goeth before them. The sheep have none of the planning to do, none
of the decisions to make, none of the forethought or wisdom to exercise; they
have absolutely nothing to do but to trust and to follow. And surely it can
never be difficult to trust a Shepherd as ours is, for with the Lord for our Shepherd
we cannot conceive of any lack in the care He will take of us, or the provision
He will make. Neither can it be any hardship to follow Him withersoever He leads,
for He always leads His sheep into green pastures and beside still waters. He
has nothing else but green pastures and still waters into which to lead His
sheep; all His pastures are green, and all His waters are still.
Let me entreat of
you, then, to begin to trust and to follow your Shepherd now and here. Abandon
yourself to His care of a shepherd, and trust Him utterly. No matter though you
may seem to yourself to be in the very midst of a desert, with nothing green
about you, inwardly or outwardly, and may think you will have to make a long
journey before you can get into the green pastures. Our Shepherd will turn that
very place where you are into green pastures, for He has power to make the
desert rejoice and blossom as the rose. And He has promised that “instead of
the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up
the myrtle tree;” and “In the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in
the desert.”
