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THE Lord is my shepherd

If this sentence is indeed true of each one of us, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” then this guarantees us certain privileges. The Eastern shepherd was the guide of his flock.

The sheep never thought of going before him—it would have been an anomaly in nature for the sheep to go first, and for the shepherd to follow.

They had no need whatever to know the way across the trackless dessert—it was enough for them that the shepherd knew it. They need not know where the green pastures still remained throughout the droughts of summer, or where there were quiet resting places where they might lie down at noon. It was sufficient for the sheep that the shepherd knew—all that they had to do was patiently to follow where he led the way.

David had, no doubt, often gone on in front of his flock, thinking with an anxious heart of the place where he would lead them. And as he looked back at them, he could see that they were patiently following him, with no distraction to trouble their poor brains, and no vexations to worry their quiet minds. Happy that they were provided for, they grazed as they went along the way, not knowing, and not needing to know where they were going, but quite content because their shepherd led the way.

Transfer this thought, Christian brother or sister, to yourself, and see how the Lord is your Guide.

Look at the past, and note how He has guided you. How very little you and I have had to do with it, after all! We have struggled. We have fretted. We have repined, and we have fumed against the working of providence, but, after all, I do not know that we have had much more to do with it than the sheep in the stream has had to do with the way in which it has floated to the other side! There is far more of the hand of God in our life than there is of our own hand—if our life is what it ought to be. There have been times, in our past history, when it has seemed as if a single straw might decide our destiny. We were at the crossroads, and the left road might have led us into endless sins and sorrows, but we were guided in the opposite direction, and so we were made to walk beside the still waters, and to lie down in green pastures. There have been many times when only a word was needed—no, when a weight no heavier than a feather from the wing of a butterfly was all that was needed to turn the scale against us, and to send us into quite a different orbit from that in which we now move!

We can truly say that we have been divinely led until now, and although the journey has been like that of the children of Israel in the wilderness—in and out, backwards and forwards, progressing, and then retrograding, and often standing still—yet the Lord has led us by a right way up to this present moment and we can truthfully say— “Still have we found that promise good Which Jesus ratified with blood! Still is He faithful, wise, and just, And still in Him let Israel trust.”

- C.H. Spurgeon