Lenten Reflection #24:Lacking nothing
Psalm 23:1 NIV
I am someone that when it comes to the 23rd Psalm tend to favor the King James version. It is the one that I learned and it is the one that is in my memory and written on my heart. When I read it, in other translations I have trouble not wanting to read the words as they are in the KJV translation.
However, it is helpful to read other translations because they can help us to see things in a deeper way and to interpret more fully the promises of God. The NIV translation of this familiar passage begins with the words that "The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing."
There are a lot of things in live that can leave us lacking. In fact, I think all things of this world will not fulfill us they will leave us lacking something. KJV say uses the word "want". Everything in live leaves us wanting more.
Anything else that we make our shepherd will lack something and leave us wanting. When money or any of those other things in live (job, fame, notoriety, family, education, position, etc.) are what we follow and rely on for protection and the source of our life and sustenance we are never satisfied we are always wanting more. They lack the ability to satisfy us. They lack the ability to weather the storms. They lack the ability to satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart. They can't fill a void that only God can fill. They will always leave us wanting more. They lack and they leave us lacking and wanting something more, something deeper and something beyond and other than just worldly stuff.
When I am my shepherd, I lack something. I lack the loving relationship with my heavenly Father who created me to love me. Money will never love me. A job, success, fame, degrees, knowledge,-- will never love me. My family and other relationships in life, as loving as they are, will never love me like God and fill that deep longing that I have to be loved unconditionally just as I am. To be loved by God who is pure love.
When we discover that love that only comes from God and we make Him our shepherd, we lack nothing.
In Christ's love and mine,
Doug
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