Lenten Devotional, Day 23: The 23rd Psalm: What Was David's Perspective?
Dear Saints,
Thursday's lenten Scriptures are Psalm 23, 1 Samuel 15:10–21, Ephesians 4:25–32.
PSALM 23:
The most well-known and beloved Psalm is the 23rd. It is honored even in the general culture. It is mostly read at funerals. It does poetically chronicle God's faithfulness throughout the seasons of life with an eye to eternity. So yes and amen to all of that.
But I'd push back in this sense. Let Psalm 23 be a Psalm for the living. Let it embolden confidence in God's leadership through life's wanderings, losses, shadows, even enemies. Moreover, let it reassure that rests and restorations will come and that the tragectory of one's life will be a lifetime of God's faithfulness unto forever.
So in some ways I can see an older David reflectively putting in poetry the summary of his life. He knew pastoral repose, wanderings, anguishes, fears, enemies, celebrity, celebrations, national epic, largess, and overflowing spoil. And through it all God was there and faithful and all-surpassing. The abasing did not embitter him, and the abounding did not distract a heart after God. Assuredly that is a valid perspective.
But permit me a contemplative, devotional take — call it a looking back, but wistfully so.
Let me ask: What do you think of when you think of David? Maybe you think of him mostly in relation to Goliath, Saul, or Bathsheba. Not me. I think of David the boy shepherd, when he was humanly alone, even forgotten, but at one and the same time his most never alone time in all his long and varied life. He had a flock of lanolin-anointed sheep, and He had a Good Shepherd.
David was called from the hills of Bethlehem. He became a king-whisperer, Goliath-slayer, teen idol, military genius, ladies' man, muscian-writer extraordinaire, and kingship & kingdom of superalative majesty. Yes, a few high-profile sins, but ones he owned and utterly repudiated. And oddly he then became the apogee of Biblical repentance.
Did David write Psalm 23 as a retrospective at the pinnacle of his acclaim, achievement? Again, perhaps. But just maybe the lonely, heavy-headed king, wrote whimsically of being again the unknown shepherd boy, with a "nation" of sheep, his only enemies wild beasts, and long night after night to gaze upon the beauty of Lord. Would he do it all over again? I suppose, he was called, did he have a choice? No, but I'd never begrudge him some moments of what-if:
THE KING'S LONGING
(hymnal measure var.)
I bide within these castle walls,
Safe in Jerusalem;
No more the worm of sheol crawls,
Nor Saul my good contemns.
But vaster haunts a hollow now
Than once Adullum cave —
To cast this crown off heavy brow;
This headstone on a grave.
Not for to lie on verdant greens
Beside its flow of dew,
While lanolin-anointed sheens
My heart's white retinue.
Although I pine that endless place
And Bethlehem's famed well;
Yet miss I most that better grace
Which to the marrow swelled.
Yea, high within the Cleft of Rock —
Hemmed 'bout, afore, beyon' —
Without my mighty men or flock
I offered my best song.
Lo, rock was not my high tower
Nor clefts why tempests ceased,
But the Almighty's Presence o'er
Was Cornerstone of peace.
There The Uncreated Holy,
There The Unconceived Glory,
There The Unmastered Beauty —
There fully known and fuller knowing!
As were my alpha days, let be my end —
O grant Thou peerless God and yet three-fold;
Set me within that Cleft, High Rock again:
There let me dwell, inquire, and behold —
Thy beauty! — Few days left for me, Amen!
Notes:
• mostly a meditation on Psalm 23 & 27, esp. vv. 4-6
• also alludes in order of occurence: Mark 9:48; 1 Samuel 22:13-14, 24:2-3; Psalm 23, 2 Samuel 23:15; Psalm 139:5; 2 Samuel 23:1-3; Exodus 3:5; Ezekiel 36:26; Matthew 28:19; Psalm 103:17.
The Only Best in/is Christ,
tIM