Dear one,
This past Monday, a beloved pastor friend and I shared together from Psalm 23—and once again we were both reminded why those six verses, throughout three millennia, have remained a powerful favorite. With comfort he noted those very strong, active verbs: the LORD provides … rests … restores … leads … prepares … anoints, and these He does as He shepherds, for the psalm’s first words literally read: “The LORD shepherds me.”
With the richness of these verbs, we then pondered verse 4: “the valley of the shadow of death.”
Looking directly at him—his room, from what our Zoom connection allowed, lay in shadow, lit by a low-wattage light—I prompted:
“And your world is in much darkness.”
“Oh, for sure,” he said, “but Palestinian shepherds, I think, are not like African shepherds: we drive our flocks, but not so the shepherds of Israel.”
We Americans also drive … or at least our cattle, I thought.
“But yes, much darkness,” he continued, “since the government has imposed an even stricter lockdown. We now are not permitted to cross from one area to another unless authorized.”
“And what does this mean for the children?”[1] I asked.
“Oh, the young ones are still with us—for them we can care; but the older ones, they’ve had to return to their villages. For them we will try to provide food, but they return to families who are starving. There is much darkness among our leaders: they seem not to understand or care that we need to be free to meet with one another; that even with a spike in covid cases, we are dying much more from starvation and malaria. Closing markets, schools, churches, and synagogues prevents us from helping one another—the government can’t help us—and thus the number of suicides is greatly on the increase.”
“The darkness is great,” I offered.
“Ah, but the Light still shines in the darkness … it has not quenched it. Last year we were able to plant ten new churches in the shadows of covid’s darkness. There’s much I don’t understand, and none of the choices appears ‘good,’ so we continue to do what we can … as quietly as we can … so the least of these can be fed and clothed. I can’t wait for the morn, when we can load the 4x4 with bags of grain, so our children and their families can eat. The Good Shepherd moves among us.”
He still does,
Stan
[1] From infants through high school, the “children” number approximately 450.