Shepherd
Except for leviathan, I haven’t chanced upon a chapter in the Bible committed to a lion, a bear, a devoted dog or some other extant predator. Even leviathan in the book of Job — which some argue is mythical or extinct, and others believe a crocodile — is not fondly presented.
Travel back in time to first century A.D. You’re sitting in an arena waiting for a gladiatorial contest to begin. You are slightly irritated because the contest is behind schedule, and the sands are sparkly brown not bacchanalian red. You ogle for speed, finesse, fine weaponry, rippling muscles and glorified slaughter. There in the arena, you have that beastly knack for blood and your ears itch for the roar of a triumphant gladiator.
You’re dozing off in the heat when the gate squeaks all the way up and in comes a hero like Hercules from the heart of Homer. He is all muscle, armor and weapon; a Goliath who walks in as though from a victorious battle. Bright-eyed, you wait. The gate across squeaks open and the other contender steps in.
You smirk. You begin to wonder if this is a circus show. Did the second contender lose his way? He seems surefooted. Has he gone mad then? What is he doing here dressed in a rustic tunic, and holding a long, ridiculous stick? Other spectators voice out these questions too. You are not alone.
Thing is we want to walk on water and globetrot magical realms. There is a yearning for normalcy in a world where every day is a wonder, where life is not a disease and the heart skips like a lamb. We want to be ideal like that.
Perhaps if we had endless power, we’d be arch-deities creating gods, making legendary heroes, sealing men’s fate before air floods their new lungs. We’d lift and crash destinies with the stroke of our divine quill. We’d make nutrients domicile in gold and not earth. We’d consider pitting man against a worthy adversary, not some puny shepherd. We’d never relate with our creatures intimately.
Travel back to the present and open your bible to the book of Psalms. There lie questions that throb in the heart of truth-seekers. What makes the six-versed chapter of Psalm 23 heftier than book blocks of gothic tales, Scandinavian stories, Grecian tragedy, folk tales, where gods smell of power and rage? Why is the supreme master of the universe likened to a shepherd? Why did the psalmist liken himself to a sheep?
The Lord is my shepherd…
This is the summary of the passage; this is the spikenard that issues from a broken heart, a fatigued body, a poor spirit. David paints a simple vista of green pasture and cool, quiet streams. There is no rage, no blood-eagled fear, no rumbling thunder, no blade and flint…just sheep whose bellies are tight with green and water, just the gentle tap-tapping of the shepherd’s crooked staff on stones.
Where the shepherd is, the sheep finds home. The shepherd makes the heart a home.
Home is where grace flows like a stream. The shepherd’s love hangs like sky art: cloudbursts feeding this stream that brooks no lack. Home is land that lacks no brook.
There are days when the psalm is paper and words. I recite it with the zeal of a well-oiled machine gun; it’s forgettable like falling leaves, swept away by strong winds. I am neck-deep in the cares of life, and the shepherd is just a dusty, sweaty, old Bedouin with a stick. In the midst of the hustles and the hassles, I forget I do not belong to myself, wandering away from his path to make my name. I scoff at what this “Bedouin” can do in a boardroom, what he can do in my scurrying for solutions to complex problems.
He tells me to be still.
There’s wholeness to being still, like unbroken silver behind smooth glass pane, like the warmth of the earth at sunset, like cool spring water. The shepherd presents himself whole, 3D and colorful in the heart.
He is sheer beauty.
We say “cross my heart, hope to die” to affirm truth. But Jesus, our shepherd, portrays the reality of that statement. Sheer beauty is undeniable reality, as real as a bloodied body on a cross hoping to die that we may experience wholeness. Sheer beauty is the shepherd’s bleeding heart, a heart lanced by our sins, by our sheep-brained, wrought-iron stubbornness; a heart beating to a stop that we may know the cost of stillness — what it takes to embrace God’s wholeness.
I shall not want.
The shepherd’s staff of truth tap-taps our rocky heart until it gives. A piece of rock becomes countless grains prologue for water, seed, green, flower and fruit. Abundance: little grains pave way for big fruits because of deep roots. The roots of the shepherd branch out, become lovingly complex like a network of arteries in the body.
He is evergreen love in seasons of brokenness and seasons of abundance.
This is our God, our shepherd. He doesn’t rule like some wannabe gods. He desires love from the human heart, love as doe-eyed as a sheep. David is not wrong in propping himself on a sheep’s hooves. There is a deep longing to be like no other than God, and it takes the mind of a sheep to have the mind of the shepherd.
