The Proactive Shepherd

When we read the 23rd Psalm we read about a proactive Lord.  For those who say that God simply sits around watching us do our thing, but never intervenes, or expresses His own desires for our living, the 23rd Psalm becomes something hard to reconcile.  The Good Sheperd set forth in these words of David is a very active Shepherd.  He does not leave the sheep to fend for themselves, or to figure it out for themselves, but instead they live under His watchful eye and His active Spirit.     

Listen again to the beginnning words of that ancient Word, "He maketh me...He leadeth me...He restoreth my soul...He leadeth me..." We read of all this activity in just the first three verses.  It is always tempting for us in our times of trouble when we seem to be going it alone without any divine help to come to the conclusion that God is not paying attention, or even worse, if He is paying attention, He does not care.  What is true is that our walks in the darkness will cause us to entertain the worst case possible scenarios and surely one of those is that God does not care enough to act in our behalf.     

The darkness is, of course, causing us to see and embrace a lie.  We are never alone.  We are never without the care of the Lord.  He not only sees what is going in our life, but He is working in our behalf in the midst of it to bring us thourgh it.  We may not be spared some of the hard moments we would choose to avoid, but as surely as Christ was brought through the horror of the cross to the surprising glory of the empty tomb, so shall we, too, find somewhere in the journey that we were never alone and  always in hands that were guiding us closer to Home.