broke into spontaneous applause. When the ovation had died down, the man of God came to the podium. He, too, recited exactly the same passage, only he emphasized different words and his speech was more hesitant than that of the actor's smooth flow ing performance. When he finished, there was no applause, although a number of the people had tears in their eyes. The famous actor rose slowly and declared, “We’ve both quoted the same Psalm. The differ ence i s : I know the words from memory, but the pastor knows the Shepherd by heart.” It was Martin Luther who first pointed out, “The heart of Chris tianity is in its personal pronouns.” How right he was as we can see from this 23rd Psalm! There are 17 pronouns in these six verses and all in the first person singular. It was very sad to see a little boy dying. His mother asked the pastor of the church to come and comfort him, for he was frightened. The family was very poor. The father had died some years before so the poor woman had to work days try ing to hold her little family together as best she could. The boy, however, was so sick that doctors gave her no hope for his recovery. He was a good little Christian although naturally frightened about the future. When the pastor came to encourage him, he kindly asked, “Sonny, do you know the 23rd Psalm?” The child nodded his head weakly in the affirmative. The preacher asked, “Do you think you could quote the first five words of it?” Struggling, the boy paused for a moment and then began slow ly, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” Squeezing his hand, the man of God encouraged him, “Now when you say those wonderful five words, you just think of the five fingers on your hand. Take hold of each finger for each word.” He showed him how to do it by clasping each finger in line as the words were given, “The Lord
is my Shepherd.” Then, in more solemn tones, he told him, “Son, sometimes you’re not going to feel as if you could say all those words out loud or even to your self. You may be so sick that all you can do is to move your one hand around on the fingers of your other. In this way it will be just the same as saying it. When you come to your fourth finger, it will be the word my. When the day comes that you feel all you can do is to hold that one finger, do it, and you’ll be saying ‘The Lord Jesus Christ is MY shep herd ; no one can take Him from me, no matter how sick I may be.’ ” This greatly cheered the lad’s heart. A week later the mother called the pastor to let him know that her pre cious son had been taken home to Heaven. At the funeral, the preach er told how that when the boy was found, with death having overtaken him, his one hand was clutching the fourth finger of his other. He entered eternity, knowing that the Saviour would be there to take him all the way into the shelter of His bosom. I wonder, how is it with your life? If the Lord should call you, would you be able to enjoy this same blessed relationship? The last word is a job description, “Shepherd.” I f we should select one animal in all of God’s creation which would give us a better picture, or symbol of that which is helpless and so often foolish, a sheep would have to be right at the top of the list. We get a better picture of this per haps in Isaiah 53:6. Shepherd sig nifies care, provision, concern, watch fulness, feeding, guidance, shelter, to name but a few. It is a tremendously radical thing to be a sheep of God’s flock. Before you ever say, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” remember that in so doing you’re stating that you are owned utterly and completely guided by the Lord. The last phrase of the first verse is, “I shall not want.” I like the way 14
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