Like a shepherd

Every year I do the same thing. I come crashing into Holy Week. And coming off a particularly strange and difficult year, I find myself in even more of a tailspin than usual. I’m grasping for control in areas I have absolutely no control over. I’m wound up and worn out from trying to hold the people and things around me together. As a friend aptly put it yesterday, I’m white-knuckling life, per usual.

When I was taking piano lessons as a child I didn’t realize what a source of comfort this instrument would become for me as an adult. It’s not that I’m an accomplished player. We have an old, upright, out of tune piano. But in a strange way, when I sit down at the bench it becomes a confessional or an altar of sorts. I calm down and breathe slower. Color returns to my knuckles. My temper subsides. I feel the tenderness of God there no matter how hard and restless my heart may be at the time.

As much as I resist the notion, I think it’s true that we have to be still to know and experience God. Otherwise the noise of the world and our own thoughts drown out his voice. And for me, I have to force myself to find stillness on a piano bench the same way some people might find it on a trail in the mountains or on a boat on the lake.

A few weeks ago I found a folder of music from our wedding in 2005. Some of the songs we had played before the ceremony were favorites from my youth choir days. One is titled “Savior, Like a Shepherd” and the lyrics mean more to me now than the tune:

Savior, like a shepherd lead us
How we need your tender care
In your pleasant pastures feed us
In our hearts your way prepare.

You have promised to receive us Lord,
With our hearts that long to see.
Please have mercy to forgive us oh, Lord.
By your grace you set us free.

Savior, like a shepherd lead us
Be the guardian of our ways
Keep us, guide us, defend us oh, Lord
Seek us when we go astray.

It’s easy to choose pretty songs for your wedding. It’s harder to believe and practice the theology of those songs.

We’re in the midst of some big decisions that affect our vocations and our family. I don’t ever do well with change. It feels unsettling and disorienting––much like this past year has felt. But I know growth and goodness are often on the other side of change. On my worst days I feel certain we’re alone and crazy, mishearing the Lord’s voice, and bound to wander outside of his will. And on my best days I remember God is a tender shepherd, and following his lead isn’t the scavenger hunt I make it out to be. It’s less searching and striving, and more trusting and remembering who it is we’re following and how much he cares for us.

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” ~ A.W. Tozer

I want to think rightly about God. But when left to my own devices I start to think of him as one who grows weary of my stubbornness and distracted disobedience. I sometimes think of him as distant or disinterested. Surely he’s bored if not exhausted by my missteps and my wanderings. I humanize God and minimize his affection.

The writer of my favorite Psalms didn’t do this. Despite his tendencies toward waywardness, David knew God well enough to think rightly about him. After all he did and all he went through, he still pens Psalm 23 and says with confidence, “The Lord is my shepherd.”

I want to think of God in this way.

The Lord is my shepherd. More than that, he tells us in his own words:

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd sacrifices his life for the sheep.” John 10:11

That kind of sacrificial shepherding is hard to understand. And on many days, that kind of grace is hard to receive. But on this Holy Week we pause to remember the gift of these truths.

While we were yet sinners—even sinners with knuckles white from trying to control the details and direction of our lives—Christ died for us. Christ our shepherd became Christ the Lamb of God. And then God raised him from death and darkness to forever be Christ our Lord. This is the Shepherd we follow: a loving, leading, living shepherd.

And so… we keep proclaiming with our lips and our lives: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

_{* “Savior, Like a Shepherd” lyrics by Dave Hampton and Jeff Lippencott}