Meeting God in the PsalmsSample

Trust

I’m guessing, if your life is like mine, that there are some things in your life that you need to trust the Lord with—the future, your job, your family, your health.

Or maybe the phone rang recently with hard news—you’re on the God path but suddenly are disoriented, dislocated. Your faith is shaken. How is this all going to turn out?

King David wrestled with all that as well. He wrote many lament psalms, but he also wrote psalms of trust. Psalms of trust are, in some ways, the opposite of psalms of lament.

Psalms of lament are often asking God, where are you?

Psalms of trust are saying, God, look how near and how faithful you are.

Psalm 23 is perhaps the most famous and beloved of all the psalms, and it is a psalm of trust. In it David considers all God has done and been to him throughout his life. God has been a shepherd to him, guiding him through dark valleys into pastures and quiet waters.

And this is a metaphor, yes? David is comparing God, whom we can’t see, to a shepherd, a kind of person we can see. And David knew all about shepherds—he was one.

The Psalms use a lot of metaphors to describe God and show us what he’s like. What is God like? How does God take care of me? God is our rock. God is a fortress. God is a shield. God is our shelter. And here, God is a shepherd.

God’s love and care for us are not just ideas. They’re not abstract or invisible. We experience the love and care of God through the things of this world. Psalm 23 celebrates that.

We’re going to do the same in just a moment. Here’s my question: Who has God been to you? How has he guided you? Where has he taken you?

Most of us have not been shepherds, but God has shown up in our lives in other ways.

Linda is a nurse who takes care of patients with leprosy. She wrote, “The Lord is my wound dresser.” Judy, a dancer, wrote, “The Lord is my dance partner.”

My personal rewrite of Psalm 23 starts, “The Lord is my captain.”

Choose a metaphor from your life—who has God been? How has he guided you?—and write your own personal version of Psalm 23. You don’t have to be a writer or a poet to do this. David has done most of the work for us. You can do this in ten minutes, or you can take an hour if you want. But follow the pattern and the movement of this psalm. Let’s be clear: We’re not rewriting Scripture here. We’re writing our own prayer-psalm to the Lord, remembering how faithfully he has led and guided us and reminding ourselves that, no matter what our circumstances now are, we know the end of the story, how it all turns out:

"Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever."

Draw Near

Experience God’s faithfulness in a new way by writing your own personal version of Psalm 23. First, choose a metaphor that pictures how God has led and guided you through your life or through the past few years. Then follow the pattern and sense of David’s psalm, replacing the shepherd language with the language that fits your chosen metaphor. Remember that we’re not rewriting Scripture here; we’re not trying to alter theology or the character of God. Rather, we’re deepening our trust in him. We’re describing God’s great faithfulness to us in a fresh and personal way. And in the midst of uncertainty, we’re remembering the glorious outcome of even our hardest stories.