Psalm 23: The Lord Is My Shepherd — Part IV
During the warmer months we are fortunate to look out from our back deck onto, quite literally, “green pastures.” We live next door to a fairly large sheep farm with 400 acres of lush, green fields. When I think of the “green pastures” depicted in psalm 23, this is the image that comes to mind.
You may notice something ironic about this picture. If this is a sheep farm, where are the sheep? Sadly, we rarely get to see our neighbour’s sheep; they only get let out during a few months each year, and usually for only an hour at a time. Each season the farm produces enough crop from these fields to feed their nearly 1000 sheep for the entire year. Because of the abundance, these Canadian sheep, truthfully, never really need to ever leave their stalls.
This scenario is not the case for the typical Middle Eastern Shepherd and his sheep. Notice the contrast to the pasture lands from our neighbour’s farm to the grazing landscape in the second picture. No one living in Canada would ever confuse the second picture as depicting “green pastures.” To our eyes, the land looks desolate; one almost feels sorry for the poor animals. To the Bedouin this is what was, and still is, their idea of a “green pasture.” Also consider the fields in this picture were taken in the country of Jordan on the lands east of the Dead Sea nearing the end of the rainy season. Within a couple of weeks from the time this picture was taken, what little tufts of greenery you see would soon disappear. In much of the Middle East green pastures are the exception, never the norm.
Now move with me from the eastern side of the Dead Sea over to the western side, into Israel, and into the region where David shepherded, into the Negev wilderness. Hopefully you are beginning to get the picture of how precious the idea of “green pastures” and the corresponding “still waters” would be to David and to all who knew anything of shepherding during biblical times. We think of the 23rd psalm beginning in a place of bliss, while later on the shepherd leads the sheep through the deadly valley. The truth is, the deadly wilderness is far more representative of life to the shepherd and sheep than are the “green pastures.”
One of the “seven deadly sins” we struggle with and often fail to even realize in our Western cultures is the vice of gluttony (and I am not only referring to food). Sadly, when we think of “green pastures” we automatically think of our North American verdant landscapes, where sheep should never find themselves in a place of want. In contrast, the true “green pastures” of Israel are not pastures of abundance, but pastures of enough. Our good shepherd promises us to supply us with what we need, rather than overwhelm us with more than we can appreciate. When you find yourself lost in the wilderness, and longing for an “All-You-Can-Eat” buffet, remember Jesus encourages us to first pray, “Give us this day or daily bread.”
