A psalm of David.
1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3 he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.
Psalm 23 is a famous Psalm for obvious reasons. It’s provided comfort to folks over many generations, as it’s provided comfort to me over the years. This was the very first passage of Scripture that I memorized in First Grade. Of course, I memorized it in the KJV because that’s the only translation that we should be reading, right?
I’m not going to do an extended study on this passage because others have already done it, but I am going to speak briefly on the line that seems extremely pertinent to our situation right now.
Covid-19, or Coronavirus, is all anyone is talking about. It’s affecting every single person on this planet. I don’t think that anyone is actually benefitting from this, nor do I think we should try to find a way to benefit from it. People are dying. People are becoming sick. People are losing their jobs. Life is weird.
Though no one is winning in this virus, there is a way to find God in it all. People that know me know that I’m not one of those people that ascribe the atrocities of the world to God. There are evils and terrible things happening, and these aren’t judgments from God. I think that’s a pretty awful thing to say about something like this. But I do think that we can find God in the midst of this.
Throughout this entire process, I’ve been asking God, “What are you inviting me into?”
And I’ve felt, through it all, that God is inviting me into deeper intimacy and relationship. The other night, I was reading through some of my older journals and blogs. It’s funny how devoted and dedicated I once was to writing through my thoughts and emotions. I’ve become “too busy” to write, and I’ve also felt like I didn’t have much to say. But now, I feel like God is inviting me to get back out there.
God is making me lie down in green pastures. I’ve been going and doing for such a long time that God is making me lie down.
Three weeks ago, Nashville was hit by a tornado. Many parts of Germantown and East Nashville were affected by it. The restaurant that I had worked at for over a year had gotten hit. It’s interesting because the day before the tornado, I had spoken with our GM to tell him that I needed to cut back on my hours because I felt like I was supposed to do more for my church body. Then the next day, my job there was gone.
I had no other choice but to dive into what I felt like I should have dived into when I graduated seminary.
God is making me do something that I had been resisting for a long time. God’s funny like that. We often resist and are reluctant to do what we’re supposed to do, but God sometimes strips things that get in the way of true relationship.
What is God making you do right now? I have so many things that I could have written on in this passage, but this was the thing that stood out to me.