By: Ali Elizabeth Turner
We are coming up on the time of year when we celebrate the most extraordinary demonstration of “crazy love” that has ever or will ever occur in the history of humankind: the choice made by Yeshua to lay His life down for His sheep. It was a gruesome, disturbing, chaotic one-man Holocaust, and in the final moments, only the Father knew what the ultimate, world-changing outcome would be. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who is described as the Shepherd in Psalm 23 poured His “shepherd-ness” into His perfect Son, who then exemplified the unique qualities of shepherding in all that He did, including giving everything for us lost sheep.
Ahhh, sheep; now there’s an analogy. Easily frightened, utterly dependent, and who possess no way to defend themselves. It is not a way humans typically want to think of themselves, and indeed, it is not the only description in the Best Book of what it is to be human. There are lots of references to images that are much stronger—warriors, builders, sojourners, planters, reapers, sowers, lovers, parents, teachers, children, and more. But sheep? No one wants to be thought of as a creature that is without a way to protect itself and yet thinks it’s smart to wander off, get lost, get stuck in brambles, perhaps fall in a rushing stream and have the very wool that keeps it and others warm serve to be a source of death by causing us to get water-logged and drowning. And the Shepherd? He values His sheep so much that He will do anything to rescue and restore creatures who have only a plaintive bleat to signal their distress and their location.
I think it’s safe to say that most of us are familiar with Psalm 23. It typically is what is printed on funeral bulletins, and one of the earliest Scriptures put to memory in Sunday school. If AI can be trusted, (and we won’t go there in the body of these musings) Psalm 23 is the second most popular Scripture on the planet, bested only by John 3:16, which matches the entire scenario of Psalm 23. That being said, I don’t know about you, but I have spent way too much of my life treating Psalm 23 the same way I have at times treated the Lord’s Prayer or even the Pledge of Allegiance—something I am readily able to say but am not necessarily connected to in the moment.
However, I am in a season where Psalm 23 has come alive in a whole new way, and it has become my “go-to” weapon when I experience the particularly grueling mind-and-prayer battles that famously hit sometime between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. The declaration that I am a sheep who has a Shepherd that will see me through; who feeds me extravagantly and makes my defeated enemies watch; who is with me even when I am traveling through a valley that is named Death; who sends goodness and mercy to chase me down even when it feels like my very wool is so sodden that I am going under. And I have a deeper appreciation of the Shepherd’s job description: the Restorer of my soul. Remember this: your soul has to take a serious hit if He is going to do His job. And, I can say from experience that no one can do it better.
